Even after decades of accolades, sold out tours and multi-platinum albums — Bono is still self-conscious about U2's early days. Vulture.com reported the legendary frontman appeared on The Hollywood Reporter‘s Awards Chatter Podcast and revealed that in the beginning, neither he nor The Edge were particularly keen on the band's name.
In 1978, following brief stints as both Feedback and the Hype, the band's buddy and fellow musician, Steve Averill, came up with the now beloved and iconic name. Bono remembered, “He came to us with a few suggestions, one of which was U2. And of the suggestions, it wasn't that it jumped out at us as the name we were really looking for, but it was the one that we hated the least. And what we loved about it was that it was not obvious from the name what this band would sound like or be about.”
He went on to laugh as he recalled, “I was late into some kind of dyslexia, I didn’t realize that the Beatles was a bad pun either. If we’d thought the implication of the letter and the number, in our head, it was like, the spy plane, it was a U-boat, it was futuristic. But then, as it turned out to imply this kind of acquiescence, no, I don’t like that name. I still don’t really like the name.”