When it came time to choose a band name, Daron had this poem he’d written titled “Victims of a Down.” I don’t even really remember what the poem was about—it was something personal for Daron—but it just sounded like a cool phrase and almost like a mission statement for the band. But there was discomfort with having the word “victims” in the band name as it denotes a negative connotation, so we subbed in “system of a down.” I liked the name because even though it doesn’t have any literal meaning, it has a figurative one that you can sense just by reading or hearing the words.
