If you didn't know who Lana Del Ray was, and you were asked to picture someone with that name, you'd probably imagine an exotic beauty somewhere on a sun-drenched beach living a life of impossible luxury and glamour. That tells us it was a great choice of pseudonym; it's a very evocative name.
In truth, Elizabeth Woolridge Grant tried out a few names for size before she settled on the one we know her by now. If you'd been lucky enough to see her during her early days, you might have seen performances by 'Lizzy Grant and the Phenomena', and 'Sparkle Rope Jump Queen'. Perhaps deciding that the latter might have been a tiny step too far, she thought back to the Cuban girls that she and her sister used to play with as children and borrowed from a combination of their names to form her own.