[N. Theknow]

OOPS!

Colonel Hoople shoulda been Major.

[Charles Henrickson]

The things you can learn with a quick Internet search! Turns out, the name of the band "Mott the Hoople" was not taken from the comic strip character "Martha Hoople"--at least not directly:

Of course, there is Willard Manus' novel Mott The Hoople, which inspired the name, from 1966. . . .

So just what is a hoople? And what is a Mott the Hoople? Mott the Hoople is the character in a 1960s novel by Willard Manus. A "hoople" is a hobo or a buffoon. Guy Stevens, the band's producer and mentor during the Island years, was serving time in jail for a drug offense. While in jail, he met a young man serving time for a similar offense. That man was reading a novel called Mott the Hoople. Shortly thereafter, the man died, but the title Mott the Hoople stuck in Stevens' mind. . . .

So the band got the name from the title of the book. But I'm wondering if the book's author, Willard Manus, did not have name of the comic strip character at least in the back of his mind, subconsciously, when he came up with the title. Sounds too close to be coincidental. The common link, of course--which undoubtedly predates the comic strip, the book, and the band--is this word "hoople." Perhaps the originator of the strip used that word as a name for comic effect.