Harry Styles: 'One Direction's name was my idea'

Harry Styles came up with the name One Direction for the now world-famous boyband.

Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan and Harry all auditioned as individuals for Britain's The X Factor in 2010, before they were put together as a group. After hitting it off, the boys were given the job of choosing a moniker for their band, which is when Harry's inspiration struck.

Asked about who chose the name One Direction during an interview on CBS Sunday Morning, Harry replied: "I know they're not here to defend anything else, but it was me. I thought it sounded good. We threw around names for a little bit, and I honestly don't know. I suggested it and everyone was like 'Yeah we like that' and then it kind of stuck, and that was what it was."

Harry's tale aligns with a previous interview Louis gave to TheHotHits.com, in which he said: "Harry text us to ask what we thought and it was one of those were we all just said, 'Yes' straight away. We all entered the competition with one thing in mind and that was to go to the top, so it worked. And it can be abbreviated to 1D!"

The band enjoyed huge success worldwide during their time in the spotlight, before Zayn quit in March, 2015. Since then, Zayn has spoken about his time with the boys in various interviews, including in one chat recently where he admitted he "never really spoke to Harry” while he was a part of One Direction.

Liam tried to shed some light on the matter when he was asked about the quote during a game of True or False as part of an interview with Pure Break.

"Sometimes, people can seem like friends and maybe under the surface, they’re not. I don’t really know,” he said. “When we were in the band, we all seemed to get along quite well up until the end of it I guess you know, after Zayn left."