Where did the Grateful Dead get their name? What does it mean? I’ve heard a lot of tales, but I’ll believe only you. –S. Seidman, Stevenson, Maryland
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I am a rock of comfort, ain’t I? The official story on the Grateful Dead, as related by Jerry Garcia in the book Playing in the Band, is as follows: “We were standing around in utter desperation at Phil [Lesh]’s house in Palo Alto [trying to think up a name for the band]. There was a huge dictionary, big monolithic thing, and I just opened it up. There in huge black letters was ‘The Grateful Dead.’ It…just cancelled my mind out.” I’ll say. I mean, what the hell kind of dictionary was Garcia looking at, anyway? But it turns out he may not have hallucinated the whole thing after all. In the Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend, we find a page headed “GRATEFUL DEAD” in big type. Beneath this is an entry to the effect that the “grateful dead” is a motif figuring in many folktales.
In other Dead news, I learn that John Epler, a leading bug authority and loyal Straight Dope reader, has named a newly discovered species of chironomid midge after the Dead, namely Dicrotendipes thanatogratus. (Thanatos is Greek for death, gratus Latin for grateful.) Abrim with boyish enthusiasm, he sent the band a note, but can you believe it, the ingrates (oh, rich irony!) never bothered to reply! Maybe they were turned off by the gauche commingling of Latin and Greek. Or maybe they’re just too jaded. Whatever, when John names his second new bug, you can be sure I won’t forget the thank-you note.
