- but the truth is simpler than many would think.

In 1976, a 14-year-old Larry Mullen Jr. stuck a handwritten note on the notice board at Mount Temple Comprehensive School, looking to start a band.

What began as six kids jamming in a kitchen slowly morphed into something far more ambitious: Paul Hewson (soon to become Bono), David Evans (aka The Edge), Adam Clayton and Dik Evans formed the early incarnation of the group.

They started off with the name Feedback - chosen, they later admitted, because it was one of the only musical terms they actually understood.

They then rebranded as The Hype, a name which didn’t last long either. It was 1978 when things really changed. Dik Evans left the group, and a new four-piece configuration stepped into the spotlight with a fresh name: U2.

The name was actually suggested by Steve Averill, a punk musician from The Radiators From Space and a friend of Adam Clayton’s. He handed the band a shortlist of six potential names - and U2 made the cut... But barely.

“It wasn’t that it jumped out to us as the name we were really looking for”, The Edge explained, “but it was the one that we hated the least.” Speaking on Awards Chatter, the guitarist said it felt “fresh” and open to interpretation, and it didn’t force their sound in any specific direction. Bono admitted: “I still don’t [like it]. I really don’t.”

He said the band initially gravitated toward the name's associations with futuristic warfare - “the spy plane”, “the U-boat”, etc - but ended up feeling it carried a passive undertone. “As it turned out to imply this kind of acquiescence - no, I don’t like that name”.

“I’ve been in a car when one of our songs has come on the radio,” he said. “And I’ve been the colour of - as we say in Dublin - scarlet. I’m just embarrassed.”

Bono has long been open about his mixed feelings toward the band’s early work, including their image and sound: “I do think U2 pushes out the boat on embarrassment quite a lot”, he said on the Awards Chatter podcast.

“And maybe that’s the place to be as an artist - right at the edge of your level of pain for embarrassment.”

He’s not happy with his younger self’s voice either, saying “my voice sounds very strained on those early recordings” - even though he singled out the one work where he feels like he sounded good: 2004 hit 'Vertigo'.

During the same interview, he admitted that his late-diagnosed dyslexia may have played a role in why he didn’t question the name choice sooner: “I didn’t realise that The Beatles was a bad pun either...”

With a new name, line up and image, the group then played a farewell gig as The Hype in March 1978, returning to the same stage later that night as U2, performing original songs. Weeks later, they won the “Pop Group ’78” talent contest in Limerick - an event The Edge later called “a great affirmation” for a band still in its earliest stages.

Now, the band boasts the title of one of the biggest bands in history, with over 150 million records sold, an impressive 22 Grammy Awards, and a decades-spanning tour schedule that changed the face of live music.