Last month, the band formerly known as The Dixie Chicks shocked their fans when they dropped the word “Dixie” from their name, and chose to be known as The Chicks going forward. Now, the band members are speaking out to reveal what they almost changed their name to.

The Chicks band members Natalie Maines, Emily Strayer and Martie Maguire appeared on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on Thursday, and the talk quickly turned to their name.

“It’s because of everything that’s going on in the world. It was about time; we’ve wanted to change it for a long time, actually,” Maines explained. “We started using ‘DCX’ a lot and ‘The Chicks’ a lot whenever we could – we hoped it would catch on, but it didn’t.”

“So, in the moment now, we just felt that it was right, and we didn’t even have to have much discussion about it,” she added. “We just all wanted to do it right away, and so we did.”

Strayer chimed in to say that while all three of them agreed the name change was necessary, they had a ton of different options for a new one.

“We had to make sure we had our ducks in a row legally,” Strayer said. “We thought The Chicks would be the easiest thing, but we did have to entertain a few other names. One of the ones that came up was our initials, but spelled out as M.E.N., so we’d go from chicks to men.”

“We had some names in the past that we would kind of call ourselves as our alter egos, we could’ve pulled those from the past,” Maguire added. “One was Puss in Boots, but there’s already a band called that.”

The Chicks announced their name change last month, dropping “Dixie” because it is a word used to describe southern states, particularly those that were in the Confederacy. On their website, the band simply said “We want to meet this moment,” seemingly referring to the fact that the Black Lives Matter movement has gained traction like never before in the wake of the death of George Floyd back in May.