Sting – Stage Name Origins

He was born Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, but you are better off just calling him Sting. The former bassist-singer of New Wave rockers the Police was given the nickname during his pre-fame days playing in a local jazz outfit called the Phoenix Jazzmen, when for one gig he wore a black and yellow sweater with hooped stripes -- and the name stuck. "My children call me Sting, my mother calls me Sting," he once responded to a journalist who called him by his given name. "Who is this Gordon character?"