Float Like A Butterfly, Sting Like a Rock Star

Every breath you take could fog up a message in a bottle.

Howdy! It’s Joey, back with more Fun Fact Friyay. This fact might make you sing “ROOOOX-ANNE” at incredibly loud volumes.

Photo via Alberto Cabello (CC BY 2.0).

The musician Sting got his nickname from a black and yellow sweater he liked to wear.

When someone pairs the colors black and yellow, what jumps to your mind?

Is it the Wiz Khalifa song?

The uniform colors for the Pittsburgh Steelers?

Or maybe you think of a bee, flying around like it doesn’t have a care in the world.

As far as I know, I’ve only been stung by a bee once in my life. It was on the beach in Venice, California. I had just played a flag football game and felt something scratch against my neck. I tried to brush it off, thinking it was a twig, and then saw a bee floating around.

I knew this was not a honeybee, because they die after they sting you. And this didn’t look like a Casper the Friendly Ghost situation…but, you know, with a bee, instead of a human.

The sting hurt for a little bit. Thankfully, I was none the worse for wear. In fact, the sand from the beach lingered longer than the pain from the sting did.

If you’re a fan (or even a hater) of the Police, you’ve had far more encounters with a different kind of Sting.

The musician, born Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, has had quite the successful career. He fronted the Police from 1977 until the band broke up in 1986, and he’s continued performing as a solo artist.

He’s sold more than 100 million records and received 17 Grammy Awards between his solo work and albums with the Police. He’s even had some excellent guest starring roles on shows, such as “Only Murders in the Building.”

So, how did he end up with the name Sting?

Growing up, young Gordon was playing jazz in a few different bands around England, often with people much older than him. Gordon Solomon, a fellow Gordon and the trombone player and bandleader of the Phoenix Jazzmen, noticed the younger Gordon wearing black and yellow sweaters to practice and performances.

According to the artist, they thought he looked like a wasp, and they jokingly called him “Sting.” He kept wearing the sweaters and the bandmates thought his new nickname was the funniest thing imaginable. I suppose “Taskmaster” hadn’t started airing yet.

Sting has told a few variants of this story, with details like his age changing (he said he was 16 in one interview and 18 in another, for example). Still, the common refrain is that his striped black and yellow sweaters caused enough of a ruckus that he earned a nickname that refused to die.

Sting even says his bandmates would call up his mom to ask if Sting could come out. She enjoyed the nickname, too. Suddenly, Gordon was a thing of the past, except for his passport, which Sting says still contains his birth name.

In a 2011 interview with Time, Sting commented that just about everyone in his life uses that name.

“[My wife] Trudy calls me Sting. I was never called Gordon. You could shout Gordon in the street and I would just move out of your way. My children call me Dad.”

Whatever you call him, I hope you give something a spin from Sting’s discography this weekend. There are some bangers out there.