Question setters often claim that Scooby-Doo was named after a scat (or nonsense) phrase sung by Frank Sinatra in Strangers in the Night.
This, I would suggest, is something of an over-simplification. I challenge anyone to play me a recording of Frank Sinatra singing "Scooby–Doo".
In the single version of Strangers in the Night, what he actually sings is more like "Doo dee doo bee doo, doo doo doo dee dah, dah dah dah dah dah (dya–dya–yah) ... " at which point the song fades out.
I'm not denying that the name of the cartoon canine could have been inspired by Sinatra's 'scat' vocals. Wikipedia supports this view: "According to Ruby and Spears [Scooby–Doo writers Joe Ruby and Ken Spears], Silverman [Fred Silverman, the CBS executive who commissioned Scooby–Doo] was inspired by Frank Sinatra's scat 'doo–be–doo–be–doo' at the end of his recording of Strangers in the Night."
Strangers in the Night was released in 1966, and Scooby–Doo first appeared three years later. So ... had "scooby–doo" already become common currency by 1969, or was Silverman himself responsible for the mutation?
According to the Showbiz Cheat Sheet website, it was the latter: Silverman misheard Sinatra's scat line (heard during a flight) as "scooby dooby do".
Even with this, I have my doubts. How can you mishear "doo dee doo bee doo" as "scooby dooby do"?
I suspect "misremembered" might be closer to the truth than "misheard". I can well imagine a media executive stepping off a plane, humming a catchy line of music, with nonsense words, that he'd heard on his headset half an hour previously ... and having to make up some of those words himself (whether consciously or otherwise).
© Haydn Thompson 2021