The New England (née Boston) Patriots are a good example of a team name that nicely represents their area’s history and culture. A good choice for the birthplace of Paul Revere, Ben Franklin, and Samuel Adams.
Then there’s the Utah Jazz, who left New Orleans (where it made sense) but kept their name, even though jazz is about the last thing that comes to mind when you think of Utah.
What other team names are either a good fit or not for their host city or area?
The Washington Bullets was just a bad name, period.
Los Angeles Lakers is my go-to whenever this comes up.
In 1901 a football team bought used uniforms from the University of Chicago. The original maroon dye had faded and the owner decided, “That’s not maroon; it’s cardinal red!” Thus was born the Racine-Chicago-St. Louis-Arizona Cardinals.
Best: The St, Louis Blues, Baltimore Orioles, Texas Rangers, and Buffalo Bills, all of which form familiar phrases that would make little or no sense anywhere else.
But there is already a team called the New York Rangers, and a much older one than the baseball club, one of the oldest teams in the NHL.
Minor League Baseball has many teams, most with names associated with the region. My personal favorite is the Albuquerque Isotopes, in honor of Scandia Labs, Los Alamos, etc. (actually, it came from a Simpsons episode, but the New Mexico history is there to support it).
Worst may be the new Huntsville (AL) AA-team, which by a vote of the fans, was named the “Trash Pandas”. And no, I am not making this up.
Sure, but “New York Rangers” doesn’t make any particular sense, while the “Texas Rangers” are a thing, a police force that goes back to before Texas was a state IIRC. If you’re looking at the appropriateness of a city/nickname combo, the NHL team’s name isn’t terrible (like Jazz or Lakers) but doesn’t have any special meaning (who outside of hockey are the New York Rangers?), whereas the MLB team’s name is highly appropriate.
Not sure what age has to do with it anyway…it’s not as though the name Reds has anything in particular to do with Cincinnati or Pirates with Pittsburgh, and those teams have been known by those names for…well, at least as long as the NY NHL team has been called the Rangers, no?
The NFL Bears and Packers should have their names reversed. Meat packing is one of the historically iconic industries in Chicago, not in Green Bay, and bears live in northern Wisconsin but not in Illinois.
Google says both teams are named for the same thing:
Founded in New York by Tex Rickard in 1926 as an expansion franchise, the team was given its name by the New York press, which nicknamed it “Tex’s Rangers” (a play on the phrase “Texas Rangers”).
So yeah, that should definitely qualify as a name that isn’t particularly appropriate for the location.
I’ve used this example in similar threads before but the English amateur football team “Billingham Synthonia” has a lovely lyrical quality to it which is very much at odds with Billingham’s industrial heritage and in fact the name reflects that it was a works team, from wiki…
lovely
The Packers were named after a meat packing company.
Actually, the last thing that comes to mind when I think of Utah is the king of Spain, which is why Real Salt Lake is such a stupid name for a soccer team.
The Philadelphia Phillies; couldn’t work in any other town.
Pittsburgh Steelers get a thumbs down. Sure, the steel industry contributed to the early growth of Pittsburgh, but steel is gone and the region struggled hard to clean up the horrible environmental impact.
The Chicago Cubs. Cubs? Bear cubs? in Chicago? And speaking of bears, Chicago Bears?
The Utah Jazz get my vote. In the NBA, it’s vital that you retain any franchise player you get by signing him to a long term deal via free agency. That’s how super teams are built. Utah is a small market and not a place that excites young men like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago or Boston, for example.
In addition, the extra money they make via endorsement deals is going to be considerably less in a small market location that it would be in a large market location. I think Oklahoma City lost KD for basically the same reasons and gets my “honorable mention” because, well, they’re in Oklahoma.
The New Orleans Saints have a terrific local name, which comes from the jazz/spiritual standard “When the Saints Go Marching In”. The song has become a sort of de-facto city anthem.
The Calgary Flames started out in Atlanta, where flames had an historical connotation. There has never been a huge, devastating fire in Calgary. However, the name isn’t terrible.
Nah, they are just standing up to those fronters in New Salt Lake.
And while growing up in Boston, the only Bruins I saw were the hockey players.
Yeah, “Flames” doesn’t stand out as being wrong for Calgary. It’s kind of like the Pittsburgh Pirates; obviously there isn’t a lot of history of piracy in western Pennsylvania, but names like “Pirates,” “Buccaneers” or “Corsairs” are just cool sounding anywhere.
In baseball, “Los Angeles Dodgers” is obviously odd, since the name is very specific to Brooklyn.
I would have assumed the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals were stupidly named, but to my surprise I just now found out there are cardinals in Arizona. The franchise was, of course, founded in Chicago, where the name made a bit more sense.
The Cincinnati Reds were originally the Red Stockings. Sounds like they went from being cross-dressers to being Communists.
And of course, Red Sox and White Sox not only say little about the teams but are misspelled.