What Is Sting’s Real Name? Plus, How He Picked His Stage Name
Becoming a rock star is an act of reinvention. An aspiring musician has to transcend their humble beginnings to create a character that’s able to inspire and maintain huge crowds. Sting was able to do this during the ’80s and ’90s, becoming a worldwide star with iconic songs that brought him money, fame, and awards. But before it all began, he was just another English kid with hopes and dreams of making it big.
What is Sting’s birth name?
Prince. Rihanna. Drake. You know you’re doing it big when you become known by one name only. For some stars, the moniker is just their shortened legal name, but for Sting, it was the result of a joke between friends that expanded further than anyone imagined.
Gordon Sumner was born on October 2, 1951, in Wallsend, Northumberland, a small English county on the border of Scotland. He grew up in a working-class family, and his obsession with music was sparked by a guitar handed down to him when he was 10 by a friend of his father.
As Sumner grew up, he started going to nightclubs to watch his musical heroes perform. After dropping out of the University of Warwick in 1969, he worked as a bus conductor, building laborer, and tax officer before returning to school at the Northern Counties College of Education (now Northumbria University) from 1971 to 1974 and becoming a qualified teacher.
In his off-time, Sumner would play with jazz bands around the city. It was during these shows that his nickname was born, as he explained the origins of his nickname during an interview with CBS, summarized by Express. “I used to play in a traditional jazz group when I was about 16, with older guys”, he said,
“I used to wear these yellow and black sweaters and they thought I looked like a wasp. They used to joke, ‘Sting, Sting!’ and they thought it was hilarious and they kept calling me Sting. And that became my name.”
Changing your name because of your fashion sense seems strange, but Sting’s birth name is barely used, even by his family. In Bring on the Night, a 1985 vanity documentary about The Police and Sting’s personal life, he told a journalist that “My children call me Sting, my mother calls me Sting, who is this Gordon character?” He also told TIME in 2011 that “you could shout Gordon in the street and I would just move out of your way.”
He found great success in a band and as a solo act
The music of The Police remains one of the most notable acts of their time. The band started playing together in 1977, initially positioning themselves as a punk band, but their interest in other genres made it inevitable that their music would go in different directions.
Their first album, Outlandos d’Amour, was made before they had a manager or a record deal, but that didn’t stop them from creating their first hit, “Roxanne“, surely one of the biggest reggae-tinged pop songs about falling in love with a sex worker of all time. From 1978 to 1983, The Police put out five chart-topping albums, won six Grammys, and sold millions of records. Their fifth album, Synchronicity, which featured the toxic anthem “Every Breath You Take” arrived at the apex of their popularity, but Sting decided to go it alone and start a solo career.
The Police’s popularity came with him. Sting’s 14 albums have received plenty of nominations, including three for Album of the Year at the Grammys (The Dream of the Blue Turtles, …Nothing Like the Sun, and Ten Summoner’s Tales), and seven of those albums have gone platinum or above in the United States. He’s also done a lot of work as an activist for matters such as climate change, human rights, and opposing Brexit.
For better and worse, good marketing can go a long way to getting your work in front of potential fans. Sting’s talent would’ve been the same if he went by Gordon Sumner, but the nickname probably helped his career in some way.
