10 Funny and Creative Music Fandom Nicknames

You know you’ve made it big in pop music when your fans start to unite under an adorable nickname. Fandom names range widely in creativity. While some acts settle for simply attaching a suffix to their own name (Taylor Swift has her Swifites, Selena Gomez has her Selenators), others choose to go the more personal route, angling more for a fandom in-joke or a pun: Barry Manilow fans are “Fanilows,” Beyoncé has her Bey Hive, and JLo fans “JLovers.” No wonder Ben Affleck is so bored.

Here are 10 artists raising the bar for fandom names.

1. Ava Max, “Avatars”
The “Sweet but Psycho” singer ran an Instagram poll to pick her fandom name in 2018, and “Avatars” won out over the honestly superior “Aviators.” The final pick makes us wonder if we don’t know how to pronounce “Ava” or if Max doesn’t know how to pronounce “avatar.” But the biggest question is: Is it stylized in papyrus font?

2. Azealia Banks, “Kunt Brigade”
The rapper and singer is known for being outspoken and controversial, and the name she has lovingly (we have to assume) dubbed her fans reflects that. Banks also graciously chose to spell the C-word with a K, making it an entirely different word so that movies can reference her fanbase and still maintain a PG-13 rating. And she doesn’t get flagged on social media.

3. Ed Sheeran, “Sheerios”
Ed Sheeran is the dopey nice guy of pop music. Aptly enough, his name for his fans sounds like a chipper greeting. We can’t help but smile picturing him on one of his massive tours, playing to a stadium with just his guitar and whatever T-shirt he happened to be wearing that day, and saying something like, “Cheerio, Sheerios!’ If this has never happened, please don’t tell us.

4. Ellie Goulding, “Goulddiggers”
If you dig Goulding’s sweet tunes, we couldn’t think of a more fitting moniker for you. Interestingly enough, Goulding and Ed Sheeran were rumored to have dated in the 2010s, with the latter’s biting breakup single “Don’t” rumored to be about Goulding. Based on their fandom names alone, we think “Goulddiggers” can take “Sheerios” in a fight any day.

5. Justin Bieber, “Beliebers”
Regardless of how you feel about the Biebs, his fandom name is an all-time great. Not only is it cute and clever, it perfectly represents his steadfast followers, who have beliebed in him from his teeny bopper phase through his public menace phase all the way to his “boring married man who knows he doesn’t have to try anymore” phase. He’s like a hometown football team. Fans will keep hyping him up no matter how many times he drops the ball.

6. Lady Gaga, “Little Monsters”
Fans of Lady Gaga have been proudly calling themselves “Little Monsters” since the release of her album The Fame Monster in 2009. Lady Gaga herself is “Mother Monster” in this equation. There’s never been a “Father Monster,” unless you count Bradley Cooper during the A Star Is Born promotion cycle.

7. Lewis Capaldi, “Big Fat Sexy Jungle Cats”
If you’re a Lewis Capaldi stan and self-identify using this label, please don’t hesitate to reach out. We’d love to know what your deal is.

8. Nicki Minaj, “Barbz”
Nicki Minaj’s fan following call themselves “Barbies” or “Barbz” after the Barbie persona she takes on in some of her songs. Her male fans will sometimes call themselves “Boyz” or “Ken Barbz” instead. We are including this fandom name because we want to and not at all because we are afraid of the Barbz, who are considered to be one of the most toxic and unhinged fanbases in all of music. Not that that’s a bad thing!

9. Rihanna, “Navy”
Some artists have a “squad” or a “team.” Some may even have an “army.” Rihanna, never one to be outdone, has her Navy. The name is a reference to a lyric from her Rated R deep cut “G4L”: “We’re an army, better yet a navy.” Shockingly, this label has no connection (as far as we can can tell) to her role in the 2012 box-office bomb Battleship.

10. “Weird Al” Yankovic, “Close Personal Friends of Al”
This one isn’t particularly funny or clever, just aspirational.

Dishonorable Mention: Ariana Grande, “Arianators”
She said it, not us. Grande commented on her fans calling themselves Arianators in the liner notes for 2020’s Positions and minced no words in the process. “Thank you to the most loving, incredible fanbase of all time with the ugliest fandom name ever created,” she wrote. “Seriously, no thank yous for whoever coined the phrase ‘Arianators.’ You get no thank you. Just kidding. Love you all.” She’s honestly so real for this.