Immediately before choosing “Pink Floyd”, what was this English rock band’s name?

Nick Mason and Roger Waters met as architectural students at the University of Westminster’s London Polytechnic Institution on Regent Street. They joined an established trio—Clive Metcalfe and Keith and Sheilagh Noble—in 1963, and the group became a sextet with the addition of another architectural student, Richard Wright. They named themselves “Sigma 6”, and played in the basement of Polytechnic, on Regent Street.

Band members came and went, and “Sigma 6” became “The Meggadeaths”, then “The Abdabs”, which morphed into “The Screaming Abdabs”, “Leonard’s Lodgers” and “The Spectrum Five”, before settling down and settling on “Tea Set”.

“Pink Floyd” may never have been born, except that the group, now featuring Waters’ boyhood pal Syd Barrett as lead singer, got a rude surprise. Signing up to play on a bill with other bands, Barrett realized that the name “Tea Set” had already been taken by a different group.

Barrett needed to come up with a new name and thought of two American blues musicians whose albums he had. From “Pink Anderson” and “Floyd Council” came “The Pink Floyd Sound”. Eventually, on the advice of co-manager Peter Jenner, the group became “Pink Floyd”, which recorded the band’s first album, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,” in 1967. Pink Floyd’s last album, “The Endless River”, was released in 2014.