What's in a name? Introduction

This is a little introduction to a larger piece about the names people assign to their sporting teams. Sports in America is for many men the only emotional connection they allow themselves to be tethered to, and this is a shame, since human beings obviously need emotional connections. Why else would sports be so popular the world over?

The nicknames for American sports teams, if we go back far enough, come from descriptions of people from those areas. This is a roundabout way to discuss the popularity of college football in the post-Civil War era. People from Ohio were called Buckeyes; people from Michigan were Wolverines; from Wisconsin were called Badgers; Gophers in Minnesota...I'm sticking with the Big 10 because they still retain those customs--rather, those customs have been so ingrained as to be thought of in the reverse. The major universities from those states--Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota--adopted the names that midwest settlers had begun calling each other. A Hoosier is someone from Indiana. After a hundred years of the University of Indiana using "Hoosier" as its team's mascot, people have begun to think that calling someone a Hoosier means you're identifying their university of choice.

A few quick points seen through examples: in 1989 Charlotte, North Carolina was awarded an NBA expansion franchise. They started play in 1991 (I think), and their color scheme of teal and purple rocked the professional sports world. Their name: the Charlotte Hornets.

You might be surprised to learn that the main minor league baseball team that was a part of Charlotte's identity for almost a hundred years (almost all cities had their own team, in various levels of pro leagues) was named the Charlotte Hornets.

The sense this makes is kind of my point for the bigger post to follow. Owners tend to leave the naming of an expansion team up to the fans by way of voting on an approved set of names. This usually results in fans picking the name that has the most connection to teams of the past. Any guesses as to the name of Denver's main minor league team? It was the Rockies. How about from the same year, in Miami? They just switched back, actually, but the Miami Marlins originally was a team that played ball in the forties and fifties in Miami. How about the original LA team, the one here before the Dodgers showed up? The Angels.

Any guesses as to what the main Pacific Coast League San Diego baseball franchise was called? It was the Padres.The Padres, Rockies, Marlins, and Angels are all teams in today's major leagues, and their nicknames hearken back to their minor league origins.

Teams like the Hornets of Charlotte have a longer tradition for that nickname, similar to the Yankees. The Yankees started out in Baltimore, but when the moved to New York they were called the Highlanders. They were changed by the writers, as at the time nicknames were only nicknames and sports-page writers had the power to label the team as they felt, to the "Yankees" mainly because it could be shortened easier. "Yanks" was easier to print.

In any case, colonists were referred to as "Yankees" and "Yanks" by their British overseers, using a term with a Dutch background. Eventually people from the North were known as Yanks during and after the Civil War. Even later, during both World Wars, American soldiers were called Yankees, and now abroad, Yankees is synonymous with American, like Aussie, Kiwi, Springbok...The word made a type of sense to the New York City sports writer in 1907 to represent an American sports team in the City at the time.

A British naval officer, when complaining about the unruly people of the Carolina colony, and speaking of Charlotte specifically, likened it to a hornet's nest. The name Charlotte Hornets was used in a few different endeavors before the minor league baseball team came to be, but the nickname is one to which people in Charlotte feel connected.

But, fans can go horribly wrong in picking nicknames. Case in point (I'm not going to mention modern minor leagues of baseball, since they're absolutely fraught with awful, awful nicknames): the Washington Bullets. For those fans of the NBA, you'll recognize that there is no team called the Bullets anymore. This is correct. When Washington DC was in the top five for murder rate and total homicides in American cities, the city officials decided that the Bullets as a nickname was a little too insensitive.

The multiple choice they gave their residents is lost to me, but the final two, if I'm remembering correctly, were the Sea Dawgs and the Wizards. Both are horrible names for a major league franchise. The winner, the Wizards, is easily the worst nickname of the big four American sports.