Ron Tavernit spent more than three decades in Detroit’s radio business, including countless hours spinning records and interviewing famous musicians.

Over time, his curiosity grew — and grew.

How, he wondered, did some of these bands, singers and musicians come up with their stage names?

Now he knows.

In retirement, the Romeo resident searched his memory, queried acquaintances and pored over an array of books and reference materials to assemble a book explaining the names of more than 170 bands and singers.

The result is a 230-page book, “How the Heck Did They Get Those Names?”

“I had a wonderful career and enjoyed the heck out of it,” said Tavernit, 75, whose work life included time as a DJ, a newsman, a producer and a public affairs director.

His work took him across the Detroit radio landscape, including stops with WBRB, WTWR, WCXI, WHND and WOMC.

Before retiring in 2008, he worked with a collection of local radio favorites, including Dick Purtan, Tom Ryan and Richard D. Before that, he graduated from Specs Howard School of Broadcasting after attending Macomb County Community College and Wayne State University, where he majored in music theory and composition. After his radio career, Tavernit was executive director of the Utica Community Schools Foundation for Educational Excellence.He was working at a Great Scott! grocery store when he set his course for the radio business.

“A co-worker asked me what I wanted to do with my life and I said I wanted to be the next Mort Crim,” he recalled, referring to the longtime anchorman for Channel 4.

“She said to sign up for Specs Howard.”

The journey took him mostly through rock ‘n’ roll, county-western and oldies — all genres featured in his book.

The experience deepened his knowledge about music from the 1960s and ‘70s, which he said is at the heart of his book.

“I grew up with it and played oldies just about my entire career,” he said,

The final push he needed to write the book, he said, was provided by a dinner partner’s encouragement at a class reunion. Getting it done, he said, “took a couple of years of working on it” in fits and starts.

The finished product is loaded with examples of how notables chose their professional names, including:

• Chubby Checker was Ernest Evans when he recorded a tune for hitmaker and “American Bandstand” host Dick Clark in 1958. On the recommendation of Clark’s wife, Evans took the name Chubby Checker, a knockoff of the already-famous Fats Domino. Checker’s big hit, “The Twist,” was a 1960 chart-topper.

• Harold Lloyd Jenkins, a singer and songwriter, is better known as country music Hall of Famer Conway Twitty. He took the name by melding two towns: Conway, Arkansas, and Twitty, Texas.

• The Beatles, Tavernit said, had a half-dozen names in various incarnations en route to rocking the music world. Among those: Johnny and the Moondogs, the Rainbows and the Quarrymen. The group landed on The Beatles name in part as a tribute to Buddy Holly and the Crickets.

“If you grew up listening to rock and roll music from the 50s, 60s and 70s, you might be interested to know how groups and singers from that era got their names,” said Tavernit in announcing the book’s release. “When I played their music, I became intrigued with how and why they selected those names and if it was actually them that picked them (in many cases it was not). The more research I did, the more interesting it became.”