The band first referred to themselves as the Pink Floyd Sound back in 1965. Syd Barrett came up with the name on the spur of the moment when he heard that another band (called the Tea Set) was going to perform at one of their gigs.
The name Pink Floyd is derived from the names of two blues musicians whose records Barrett had in his collection: Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. This fictional, yet semi-autobiographical, character Pink then became the subject of The Wall. Musicologist Allan F. Moore notes how “Waters’s growing megalomania” during the making of the album “became harder to handle.”