Worst Team Nickname in Pro NA Sports

[kq76]

Syd made the comment that the Angels have the dumbest name in sports and it got me thinking, do they? So I decided to look into it and made a poll. The choices include my picks and of others I found from googling.

And yeah, a name that effectively means "The Angels Angels" is kind of silly. But when I thought about it, it's not much different from the Philadelphia Phillies. I like both nicknames on their own. There are better candidates.

Personally, I give the award to the Maple Leafs. It just bugs me on so many levels. For the NBA, I'd give it to the Clippers. For the NFL, the Texans. And for MLB, it's a tie between the Red Sox and White Sox for me.

EDIT: I was way over the character limit in the poll with what I was saying about each team so I'll just paste it below:

Red Sox - You want to name your team after the collar of the socks you wear? Why not their underwear? Oh, but that idea is taken I guess by the Knicks?
White Sox - See Red Sox above
Knicks - I was just kidding above about the Knicks, I like their name and logo, but I guess they at least deserve to be an option.
Angels - as below, the Angels Angels
Phillies - similar to the Angels above
Texans - What's next, the Minneapolis Minnesotans or the Philadelphia Pennsylvanians?
Clippers - They may have been cool at some point, but what decade, no, what century are we in? We're a long way from 1850.
Maple Leafs - Really, after a "leaf"? I don't care that it's on the flag. What are you supposed to be, Canada's team? You can't even be bothered to pluralize it correctly. Why are the uniforms not at least green?
Red Wings - ... nevermind, let's not go there.
Jazz - it was cool, when they were in NOLA
Lakers - it was cool, when they were in Minnesota
Pelicans - I kind of like it, but apparently some don't
Predators - I kind of like it, but apparently some don't
Browns - I get it, they're named after an old coach, but a lot of people don't like the colour
Heat - Were they the first pro team to use a non-pluralized nickname? The Jazz predate the Heat, but I guess because it was similar to the Blues that Jazz was still okay?

[pilight]

Maple Leaves are not green IRL or on the flag

[Cobra Mgr]

I'm assuming to make this a fair fight, you eliminated the MLS from competing so we wouldn't be inundated w/various yet mundane ways of saying "football club".

Out of the list, I think Phillies is the dumbest. One, what is a "Phillie"? Even if you consider it is a play on the filly horse that is still dumb since fillies are females.

Buffalo Bills is weird when you consider it is named after a cowboy yet no one associates the team w/cowboys. And the city name is the mascot, not the nickname.

National is a bit grandiose when you meditate that it means encompassing an entire country. So the former Montreal Expos are now America's team?

While we are in DC, Capital would make more sense then the plural. Are we saying all 50 capital cities are calling DC home?

Montreal Canadiens is redundant. So is Houston Texans.

I would love to hear the reasoning behind Maple Leafs as a team name. Pine Cones was just too silly?

[Syd Thrift]

The Clippers are another one of those "it made more sense in the old city" teams. San Diego, their original city (technically they were the Buffalo Braves before, but original to the name change), is well known for its naval base and so alluding to the clipper ships of yore was a neat idea. In LA, it's not as sexy.

I continue to say it's the Angels. Montreal and Houston, sure, they're weird. It would be like the LA Angels calling themselves the LA Californians... which is still a better nickname than The Angels Angels. Everything is a better nickname than "hur dur this is what our city name means in English". You'd have to go to something like the San Antonio St. Anthonys or the Chicago Onions, although at least Chicago comes from an obscure enough language that most people can't read the name immediately.

It doesn't hurt that the Angels are stupid. Still, the Astros are also stupid and they have a cool nickname.

[kq76]

Originally Posted by pilight

Maple Leaves are not green IRL or on the flag

I'm pretty sure they're green. True, not all are green, some are red, orange, but they're certainly not blue.

[thehef]

Mostly agree with all of this. Exceptions are the Sox' & Clippers. I like stuff that's alludes to bygone times... And the Pelicans, because of the connection to the old minor league baseball team...

Jazz & Lakers need to switch nicknames...

I remember thinking back when the Heat originated, it being a singular, that it was dumb. My opinion hasn't changed.

Soccer is littered with dumb nicknames. Mainly because they seem to feel the need to throw FC on it, and almost all of them are non-plural. The dumbest of those are probably Sporting Kansas City - I mean, why not just go all the way and throw FC in there, too? - and Real Salt Lake. Glad to know you're real... 3rd place: St Louis CITY. The Caps are theirs, not mine. Jealous of Kansas City & New York City? But not imaginatve enough to actually come up with a nickname?

Leaving soccer, Padres shoulda made the list. Definitely a top contender...

[Le Grande Orange]

How could you leave out CFL options such as the Saskatchewan Roughriders and the Ottawa Rough Riders? Montreal Concordes? Ottawa Renegades? Ottawa Redblacks? Memphis Mad Dogs? Birmingham Barracudas?

What about older NHL candidates such as the Montreal Maroons? (Name not inspired by Bugs Bunny.) Or the Brooklyn Americans? Philadelphia Quakers? Cleveland Barons?

[kq76]

Originally Posted by thehef

Mostly agree with all of this. Exceptions are the Sox' & Clippers. I like stuff that's alludes to bygone times... And the Pelicans, because of the connection to the old minor league baseball team...

Jazz & Lakers need to switch nicknames...

I remember thinking back when the Heat originated, it being a singular, that it was dumb. My opinion hasn't changed.

Soccer is littered with dumb nicknames. Mainly because they seem to feel the need to throw FC on it, and almost all of them are non-plural. The dumbest of those are probably Sporting Kansas City - I mean, why not just go all the way and throw FC in there, too? - and Real Salt Lake. Glad to know you're real... 3rd place: St Louis CITY. The Caps are theirs, not mine. Jealous of Kansas City & New York City? But not imaginatve enough to actually come up with a nickname?

Leaving soccer, Padres shoulda made the list. Definitely a top contender...

At first I thought it was the Magic that so many people first took issue with a non-plural name, but I looked it up and the Heat started before the Magic.

As for including soccer, the polls here have a 15 option limit, not a 150 limit. Otherwise, yeah, I would have included more. I did consider combining the Sox and including an Other, Explain option, but I didn't. Oh well.

I considered the Padres, but then I thought about it and it's not the name I dislike so much as the colour scheme. I feel for fans of the Padres.

[ChromEagle]

I don't understand why MLS teams who have FC, SC or City in their names don't have additional nicknames for the team like soccer clubs do in other countries like England for example. Some of them do, but I'm not sure if they're used as often or not.

[Boomcoach]

Jazz was a great name for a New Orlean's team, but just sounds silly when tied to Utah.

[Bluenoser]

Originally Posted by pilight

Maple Leaves are not green IRL or on the flag

.

[Ragnar]

You can't get worse than Texans. Lakers and Jazz are only stupid because they didn't change their name when they moved. Jazz made sense in New Orleans. Lakers made sense in Minnesota. But both are comical in their current location.

It would be like the Minnesota Northstars moving to Dallas and not dropping the North. Same goes for the Angels. But they weren't always the LA Angels.

Don't forget Magic. Also not plural.

[low]

Houston had the chance to go with "Bulls", which would have made sense in more ways than one, but they totally blew it with the Texans nonsense. Nationals is gross. Canadiens, also lame. These kind of names are the worst.

[Ty Cobb]

Amazingly not on the list:

Carolina Hurricanes...disasters are fun, I guess. Also, what body part does that logo resemble?

Atlanta Thrashers...I get that it's the state bird. The bird is brown, the team not. Boooooring.

Minnesota Wild...They'd have been better off going with the Minnesota Generics and making the colors black and white. Showing my age there, I guess.

Washington Wizards...alliteration is cute...when you're 12.

Washington Commanders...In a town overpopulated with government types, I get it...this name was decided by an unelected committee. It shows.

Cleveland Guardians...I'm not trying to start a fight about Indians versus Guardians, ok? That ship sailed. Cleveland is a boring city, so I guess having a boring team name is apropos. Guardians is the melatonin of team names.

[Westheim]

Originally Posted by kq76

I considered the Padres, but then I thought about it and it's not the name I dislike so much as the colour scheme. I feel for fans of the Padres.

When I was younger, didn't know much about baseball other than that it existed, and didn't particularly care, i considered the Cardinals to have the worst name of everything in the world. Why would you name a sports team after the final boss menace of ten-year-old choir boys the world over??

There are probably several different ways you can define "worst nickname".

The dumbest?

The wrongest?

The most meaningless?

Anyway, from the selection above it's probably either Phillies (at least Angels has a meaning beyond "from City X"; also Mets bias), Jazz/Lakers for reasons already stated here, and Predators, for how sexually charged that word has become in the last ten years or so.

[JackOnAMacYT]

I picked Predators because I have no idea why they specifically chose Nashville for that name. I mean, the reason is apparently because they found saber-tooth cat bones under a building, but they were all over North America! Also, as Westheim mentioned, the word has a very unsettling meaning nowadays (although I doubt that was intentional on Nashville's part).

[JackOnAMacYT]

Also I could add a whole lanudry list of MLS team names that are either FC [insert city] or just not good team names (ex. New York Red Bulls)

[Amazin69]

Vancouver Canucks. You choose a name that's been used as an anti-Canadian insult?

(Within a year of the team's 1970 promotion from the WHL to the NHL, Nixon aide Kenneth Clawson would forge a letter claiming that Senator Edmund Muskie [D-Maine], the former 1968 candidate for Vice-President and presumptive 1972 nominee against Nixon, referred to Canadians by that name, opening Muskie up to partisan attacks by Republican-supporting press. While Canadians take pride in the name, it is a insult that some New Englanders use against their Quebecois neighbors and particularly such immigrants from Canada, many of whom suffer the awkwardness of being native Francophones in an Anglophone country.

Yes, the WHL usage predates the controversy, but at this point it is like the Washington Redskins, where a term initially no more biased than "colored people" [NAACP] has become awkward through its use by bigots. If one had to go, so should the other, IMO)

Non-Pluralized nicknames go back at least to the World Football League and its Philadelphia Bell and Southern California Sun, even if you don't count the New Orleans Jazz, which I wouldn't understand why.

The Clippers are another "LA stole our team and so the nickname doesn't fit" case. Just as Los Angeles doesn't have the trolleys that the Brooklyn (Trolley) Dodgers were named for, or the 10,000 lakes that Minneapolis named the Lakers after, so too does it not have the port and the sailing history that San Diego honored with its homage to the Clipper ships of the previous century. Personally, I think it's kind of cute that the Southland pays homage to its history as a (legal) migrant destination. To quote noted sociologist/geographer David Lee Roth, "the country is tilted, so anyone who isn't screwed down properly ends up rolling out to L.A."

And of course the New York Knickerbockers refer to the city's founding Dutch Patroons, who long predate any use of the phrase for clothing. One can argue that they should be the Nieuw Amsterdam Knickerbockers, technically, but that's nitpicking.

[Ty Cobb]

Originally Posted by Westheim

... and Predators, for how sexually charged that word has become in the last ten years or so.

Never even thought about that, but not a bad point.

[pilight]

I share the distaste for alliteration. One good thing came from the Wizards; they named their WNBA sister team the Washington Mystics, which is a much cooler name than it has any right to be.