because the name "the mob" was not available, their manager urged them to choose a different name. they reportedly ran out of ideas, and decided to name the band after the first song on their demo tape, "queen of the reich". the spelling "queensreich" was modified to prevent association of the band with nazism; "ryche" is a middle english cognate to "reich" which, like the german word, can mean "realm", "kingdom" or "empire". the name "queensrÿche" is written with a metal umlaut over the letter 'y'. as the band later joked: "the umlaut over the 'y' has haunted us for years. we spent eleven years trying to explain how to pronounce it." the umlaut is used on all of queensrÿche's releases, except for their 2011 album, "dedicated to chaos".