Sum 41 fans only just learning 'wholesome' meaning behind band's iconic name

Yahoo

16-02-2025

They've been creating music for 28 years - but some Sum 41 fans are only just learning what their iconic stage name actually means.
The rock band, consisting of Deryck Whibley, Dave Baksh, Jason McCaslin , Tom Thacker , and Frank Zummo, came together in Ajax, Ontario in 1996.
Since then, they have won numerous awards for their music - with their most popular songs including In Too Deep, The Hell Song, Fat Lip, Still Waiting, Landmines, Pieces, Walking Disaster, With Me and Noots. But despite their decades-long fame, some listeners have no idea what their stage name means - and whether there's a meaning behind the number 41.
In a Reddit thread titled 'Band name origins', a user asked music lovers whether they know the "origin of names for the bands they listen to". In response, one user shared their surprise after recently discovering what Sum 41 means. In an interview with Alternative Press, frontman Deryck Whibley shared how the name came about, saying it's a nod to their childhood in the 1990s.
He said: "The band started on the 41st day of summer for us, because when we were in high school, we considered 'summer' the day that the school ended. I don't know if it was the official 41st day of summer but to us, when we were 16, summer started when the school was over, and the day we started the band was 41 days after that."
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He went on to explain how the band was originally called Kaspir when he started playing with school friends Steve Jocz, Grant McVitie, and an unnamed student. He added: "We went to the Warped Tour in '96, these were all the kind of bands that we listened to, which was NOFX, Face to Face, Lagwagon, Pennywise, and Kaspir was kind of, like, it leaned to some of that, but it wasn't fully into that kind of world of that kind of sound.
"After we went to the Warped Tour and seeing all these bands perform live, it was really exciting and really, it just kind of changed our world. All of a sudden, we just said, 'We need to start a band that is more like this kind of style and that can play on the Warped Tour.' "That was the dream. From that day on, that was the 41st day of the summer for us, and we decided that Kaspir is no more, the band is Sum 41."
Commenting on this revelation, one amazed fan said: "This whole time Sum 41 just meant 41 days into the summer? I'm stupid." While another user added: "Someone at school told me it was because the sum of all the band's kids was 41. For some reason I never, not even once, questioned all four band members having 10+ illegitimate children in their 20s/30s."