The Origin of the Band and the Name Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd saw its earliest beginnings in 1964 when Roger Waters started the band Sigma 6 while studying architecture at Cambridge. The rhythm and blues band was known variously as The Abdabs, The Architectural Abdabs, The Screaming Abdabs, and The Meggadeaths. The band had difficulty keeping members, and finally disbanded in 1965. Three members, Roger Waters, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright, then formed a new band which was dubbed Tea Set. Bob Klose and Chris Dennis were brought in to replace lost members of Sigma 6.
Soon, Syd Barrett joined Tea Set, and the groundwork was laid for what would become Pink Floyd. Klose left the band shortly thereafter, as Barret lead them away from the jazz and blues sound to the psychedelia which defined their early years. Barrett created the name, originally called The Pink Floyd Sound, when Tea Set found themselves playing alongside another band with the same name. He took the name from blues artists Pink Anderson and Floyd Council, who were mentioned in the sleeve note for a 1962 Blind Boy Fuller collection. The insert read: "Curley Weaver and Fred McMullen, ...Pink Anderson or Floyd Council - these were a few amongst the many blues singers that were to be heard in the rolling hills of the Piedmont, or meandering with the streams through the wooded valleys." Just think of how close they came to calling themselves Curley Fred.
Although the band went back and forth for a while between Tea Set and The Pink Floyd Sound, Barrett's name eventually stuck. While the "Sound" was quickly dropped, the band was known as The Pink Floyd for several years (David Gilmour used this name as recently as 1984). The band's first album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, was released in 1967 under than name Pink Floyd, and the rest, as they say, is history.