How Various Sports Teams Got Their Names – Top 10 Shocking Names

Most sports fans don’t invest the same amount of time and thought into how their favorite team’s name came to be as they do on matters of immediate relevance, like position battles and ticket prices.

For lifelong fans, how the team got its name was knowledge instilled in them since the moment that information was comprehensible.

For sports fans that don’t necessarily have a stake in a particular franchise, the name is either obvious or just as expected.

However, every team name has a story—even if that story is decidedly mundane. Mundane can be just intriguing as something far more grandiose because mundane can be the most unexpected explanation.

The machinations and cultural forces within a community that ultimately led to the very name that is so easy to take for granted can be utterly predictable…or pure non sequitur.

This is how sports teams got their names.

1. Seattle SuperSonics

Until the decision was made to relocate to Chicago in 2001, the international headquarters of Boeing’s aerospace company was based in Seattle. The same was true for Supersonics until they were relocated to Oklahoma City in 2008.

The franchise’s (former) name was inspired by the “Concorde-like airplane that was to be called Supersonic Transport.” Although the plane was eventually scrapped, “Supersonics” was put to a public vote in Seattle and “won overwhelmingly.”

2. Pittsburgh Penguins

They weren’t part of the NHL’s famed Original Six, but the Penguins were part of a 1976 expansion that doubled the size of the league.

When it was learned the city would become a hockey team, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette held a typical name-the-team contest.

Though somehow it was eventually Carol McGregor, wife of team owner Jack McGregor, who ended up naming the team.

Civic Arena, nicknamed “The Igloo,” inspired her to come up with the Penguins, a natural choice for a team that plays in such a distinctive building.

While many teams were named based on their uniforms the very next day, the Penguins could only be named based on their building. They got their nickname despite the objections of a logo artist who leaned heavily toward calling them the Hornets.

3. New York Knicks

Everyone knows the Knicks are shortened to knee-breeches, but what, exactly, is a “Knickerbocker”? Well, apparently the origin of the term comes from the original Dutch settlers of America. Also known as “long johns,” they were styled as “pants that rolled up just below the knee.”

Now, if you’re thinking there must be another meaning that explains why the Knickerbocker first adopted the team name in 1845, and you’d be wrong.

According to the late Fred Podesta, who was a longtime board member of Madison Square Garden, “the name came out of a hat.”

“Why the ‘why’ knee pants? “Why not ??”

4. Vancouver Canucks

Added to the NHL three years after expansion that doubled the league in 1967, the Vancouver Canucks along with the Buffalo Sabres respectively became the 13th and 14th teams to enter the League in the 1970-1971 season.

The Canucks were based off a Canadian political cartoon that dates back to 1869. “Johnny Canuck was a Canadian superhero who was created as a political cartoon in 1869” and later reinvented as “an action hero who fought Adolf Hitler.”

5. Chicago White Sox

When the second professional baseball franchise was founded in Chicago in 1900 instead of coming up with a unique name of its own, owner Charles Comiskey opted for one that had been previously set aside by the Cubs.

Originally named the White Socks, the unnamed “shortened” White Sox in 1902. Several early baseball teams were named after different colored socks.

Prior to Comiskey moving to a team in Chicago, it was actually a minor league team in Sioux City, Iowa, called the Saints.

The Nationals, which was the only league in existence at the time (the AL was founded in 1901), originally forbade the franchise from using the city name as its nickname. They opted for White Stockings because it was already familiar to fans in town.

6. Milwaukee Bucks

Team names that result from fan submissions and public voting are rarely very interesting. Such is the case with the Bucks, who were chosen from over 14,000 Milwaukeeans who participated in a contest to name a team in 1968.

The interesting part isn’t what was chosen-actually, does that make it get a lot more boring than deer? But rather what wasn’t selected.

Other possible selections, which were picked because they reflected local/regional wildlife, included: beavers, hornets, ponies, and skunks. Perhaps fans went for a shift in size, as the buck is the only option with a physically intimidating presence.

It doesn’t look like they considered the fact deer are panic-prone spazzes that can be incapacitated by bright lights.

Looking back, not going to the Skunks seems like a real missed opportunity. If that poisonous butt doesn’t stink you up, the rabies certainly will.