A lot of those lists of early baseball nicknames are bogus. Nicknames were informal and impromptu. They weren’t adopted by the clubs until much much later.
And actual scholarly research has failed to find evidence of actual use of any of those purported nicknames, such as the supposed early nicknames of the Boston Red Sox.
They were known simply as Boston or the Bostons or sometimes the Americans to distinguish them from the National League club. That’s it.
And even when there is some evidence of use of some of those nicknames, the dates should be treated as very rough.
NHL - today’s Detroit Red Wings were the Cougars (1926-30) and the Falcons (1930-32). The Toronto Maple Leafs were the Arenas (1917-19) and the St. Patrick’s (1919-27).
The Anaheim Ducks were the Mighty Ducks from 1993 to 2006.
The names are what the local papers used. The Highlanders were never an official name for the Yankees, just what many of the local papers used. The “Yankees” name came from the same source, not from the team but from the papers. So not bogus, just a different time.
My point is that actual research has shown that many of the names in these lists were in fact never used in any local paper. There’s no evidence of them. So yes they are actually bogus. The lists have been copied and recouped from sources that didn’t actually look at legitimate historical sources. Some of them there is historical evidence for. Many of them, however, no. For example the Boston example. The Red Sox were never actually called the Pilgrims or the Puritans.
NHL - the Oakland franchise was originally called the California Seals, then the Oakland Seals, then (when Charles O. Finley bought it) the California Golden Seals. The entire time, they played their home games in Oakland.
MLS - when it first started, San Jose’s team was called the Clash. It was changed to Earthquakes when the league wanted to create some sort of historical link with the NASL.
There are a couple of funky, corner-case examples from the NFL, during WWII. Due to a shortage of players, in 1943, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles fielded a merged team, and split their home games between the two cities. Though the team’s official name was “Phil-Pitt Combine,” many fans referred to them as the “Steagles” (a portmanteau of the teams’ nicknames).
Then, in 1944, the Steelers fielded a merged team again, this time with the Chicago Cardinals. This combined team was officially known as “Card-Pitt,” and played home games in both Pittsburgh and Chicago. As they proved to be a terrible team (going 0-10), they were sometimes, derisively, called “Carpets.”
The Eagles had returned to their original name after the 1943 merged season, and the Steelers and Cardinals both reverted to their original names for 1945.
Team ownership tried to officially adopt the name “Boston Bees” for the Boston Braves and “Philadelphia Blue Jays” for the Phillies, but the names never caught on.
For most of the existence of the American League’s Washington Senators, the official name of the team was the “Washington Nationals,” but it was much less popularly used than “Senators.”
Others that have been noted:
*Tampa Bay Devil Rays/Tampa Bay Rays
*Florida Marlins/Miami Marlins
*Houston Colt .45s (Colts)/Houston Astros
*Los Angeles Angels/California *Angels/Anaheim Angels/Los Angeles Angels (of Anaheim)
*Oakland A’s (official during the Finley era)/Oakland Athletics - similarly Kansas City Athletics/Kansas City A’s
*Cincinnati Reds/Cincinnati Redlegs
Going back before 1960 or so, the history becomes very muddy for most of the clubs.
Actually, most of the teams in the U.S.'s major pro leagues had pretty well-established official nicknames by the onset of WWII, if not a bit before. It’s when you go back to the late 19th and early 20th century, particularly in MLB, where you have a variety of nicknames, most (if not all) of which were unofficial.
Los Angeles Angels to the California Angels California Angels to the Anaheim Angels to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim to (unofficially) the Los Angeles Angels.
If you want to be picky about it, the “St. Louis Cardinals” is only a trademark. The club’s official name is the St. Louis National Baseball Club - or at least it was before 1995, when the team was sold to a new ownership group.
Which, now that I think about it, was kind of unusual for an American League team given the usual practice of the day. But then, they played in the national capital, and there wasn’t a National League team they had to be distinguished from.
Washington: first in war, first in peace, and last in the American League.
CFL - when Baltimore had a CFL team, at first it was called the Colts, but the NFL complained, so it was renamed the Baltimore Football Club (similar to Washington’s current NFL team - although usually it was called the “Baltimore (pause long enough for the crowd to yell “Colts!”) Football Club”), then they became the Baltimore Stallions before moving back to Canada
*NBA - Denver Rockets (ABA) became the Denver Nuggets as the NBA already had a team called the Rockets (technically, it’s the same team in the same town, but a different league)
Good example, and a fun story. When the CFL ended their expansion into the U.S., though the Stallions’ ownership relocated the team to Montreal, where they became the third iteration of the Alouettes, the league considers the Stallions franchise to have folded at that point, and the Montreal version to be a continuation of the old Alouettes franchise.
Kansas City Wizards>>>>> Sporting Kansas City
Dallas Burn>>>>>FC Dallas
New York/New Jersey MetroStars>>>>>New York Red Bulls
The original San Jose Earthquakes moved to Houston, and were originally Houston 1836, named after the year Texas gained its independence from Mexico; after an uproar from the Mexican-American population, they changed it to Dynamo.
I actually think they need to carry this even further. I mean, it’s “animal usury” to name a team the the “Bears”, “Lions”, etc. Why should their names be exploited without compensation just because they are incapable of representing themselves in court?
It should be, “The Chicago football team”, “The San Diego football team”, “The Detroit hockey team”, etc. Then, no one and no thing can possibly be offended.
