These birds, like the wild cats, are also noted for their sudden attacks, and share with them long, sharp claws, which make for an imposing aspect. Fierce feathered predators (1A) include: Philadelphia and Boston College Eagles Atlanta Hawks and Falcons and Seattle Sea Hawks (Ospreys). The prevalence of feline predators is notable, probably due to the suddenness of their attacks.
#Totem tribe gold last chestnut professional#
Wildcats Minnesota Timberwolves Michigan Wolverines Florida ‘Gators, to name a few of the current professional and college team names. Cougars Carolina, Florida (NHL), and Pitt Panthers Jacksonville Jaguars Kentucky and Kansas St. Some obvious names come to mind in the fierce animal predator category (1A), with some of the names attached to several teams: Detroit Lions Chicago and Baylor Bears UCLA and Boston Bruins Memphis Grizzlies LSU, Missouri, Auburn, and Detroit Tigers Cincinnati Bengals Houston, Brigham Young, and Washington St. Since team names are most often meant to present an image that’s intimidating to opponents and inspiring to the team it represents, wild carnivorous beasts and fowls predominate, but the totem-like aspect of the association of a group with an animal can’t be ignored.
I haven’t made a survey, but animals and birds would seem to provide the most team names. Totem animals and birds, not noted as fierce
(D) stinging insects & venomous reptiles (Hornets, Diamondbacks)Ģ. (C) other combative “domesticated” animals (Bulldogs, Gamecocks) Here are the first two of my categories, the ones I discuss in this post. My ideas on where the various Native American team names fit into this scheme will be presented in the final post of the series. It should serve to organize the discussion though. It will be obvious that some names could fit into more than one category and that my classification scheme is not the only one that might be devised. I’ll be giving a single example in category itemization, but will mention more in the discussions that follow. In this blog post and the following three, I shall take a stab at defining the various categories into which team names fall. Alliteration, as in Jacksonville Jaguars and Pittsburgh Pirates, is obviously a feature that team namers love. The name needs to be easily shouted in cheers. Very few team names have more than three syllables, and I can’t think of any with more than four. The types of names-I’ll say names rather than mascots to avoid confusion with actual animals sometimes seen on the sidelines (such as Bevo, the Texas longhorn) or with the unfortunate walking cartoon characters with disproportionately large heads, who seem a requirement at games now-fall into a few categories. I am very glad that no team I naturally support because of where I live or where I went to school has a name like Magic. That is easiest, of course, when the name is concrete instead of abstract. The emblem gives a sense of reality to an abstract concept of group membership. Nor can we overlook the lions and dragons of heraldry or the eagles of the Roman legions. Primitive societies subdivide tribes into totem groups, each group identified with and named for a specific animal or bird. “The Cubs are in town today,” is a succinct way of saying “Chicago’s National League Baseball team is playing here today.” But, beyond that, the need for associating some name and image to a team seems part of our psychic makeup. Why do sports teams need names anyway? There is a practical aspect. Rather than do all this in a single post, as I had originally intended, I’ve decided to spread it out over four posts to avoid having a post that’s longer than what almost anyone would read. It’s only fitting that I should turn to a Twitter-worthy subject, but one that requires far more than 140 characters to begin to do it justice: the naming of sports teams, which has been under discussion in the context of the recently controversial Washington DC National Football League team name, Redskins.įirst, I mean to discuss and analyze this phenomenon and then to provide a solution to the problem of the Washington Redskins name. But that was before the App Store called and before I got on Twitter I think I may be able to meet that schedule at least for the next few weeks. My foolhardy and woefully unfulfilled goal back when I started this blog was to have one post per week.
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