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       David Hayward-Jones

david_hayward_jones

Pseudonyms:
       David Bowie
       Ziggy Startdust

David Hayward-Jones (1947), the British rock star, changed his name (in 1967) to Bowie to avoid confusion with David Jones of the ‘Monkeys’. The name is apparently arbitrary, but could have been suggested by the Bowie knife. (A ‘Bowie knife’ is a pattern of fixed-blade fighting knife first popularized by Colonel James ‘Jim’ Bowie in the early 19th Century.)
       Bowie’s name is also, of course virtually synonymous with that of Ziggy Startdust, the bisexual astronaut who is the hero of Bowie’s important album ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Startdust and the Spiders from Mars’ (1972).
       Bowie’s son is names Zowie.

Source:
Room, A. (1981), ‘Name Stories’, Naming Names, p.79


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