Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

On the Naming of Sports Teams IV: Native American Team Names & What to Do About the Redskins

Thursday, November 13th, 2014

I have left the teams named for Native American warriors and tribes for this separate post, instead of including them in the earlier one on warriors and local groups, to which the names logically belong, because there are special questions raised about the propriety of such names. The three previous posts in this series are On the Naming of Sports Teams I: Animals & Birds; II: Non-Indian Warriors & Groups with Local Associations; and III: Colors, Abstractions, & Inanimate Objects.

Except for the rare collegiate self-mocking name, it should be evident that, despite the evidence of some bad choices, no one deliberately chooses a sports team’s name to bring scorn and contempt on the team, rather the opposite. So the question is not of a deliberate attempt to disrespect or ridicule Native Americans, even for the worst of the lasix names, Redskins.

There are not as many team names falling into the Native American category as there used to be. Stanford, Dartmouth, and U of Massachusetts are among those having made name changes. Others have kept names but eliminated Native American images and sideline performers. Wikipedia has a good article (at least as I write, it does) “Native American mascot controversy” on the topic.

There was no denying the valor of Native American warriors. So, even as Native Americans were pushed out of their homelands by force of arms, with great suffering and loss of life, they gained respect, even admiration, for their “savage” bravery and warcraft. Thus the many teams that chose Native American names in the past. I understand the argument against these names, but I can’t help feeling that eliminating them would contribute to our forgetting the heroism of the Native American resistance.

Here is the breakdown for this final team name category, with an example of each.

10. Native American warriors and tribes

(A) general: Chiefs
(B) tribal / local: Seminoles
(C) racial: Redskins

To 10A belong the Golden State Warriors, Atlanta and Bradley Braves, Kansas City Chiefs, William & Mary Tribe, and Cleveland Indians. Personally, I think these names are as acceptable as Spartans or Minutemen, though I have to admit they may invite some fans to don unfortunate Indian costumes. But must we outlaw Indian costumes at Mardi Gras and Halloween? I think football game face-painting etc. (which is not confined to teams with Native American names) is something we can tolerate, just as we tolerate identifying teams with fierce animals. There’s something a little primeval about it, but perhaps better not suppressed.

Tribal or local names (10B) include Florida State Seminoles, Central Michigan Chippewas, Utah Utes, Chicago Black Hawks, and San Diego State Aztecs. The Fighting Illini of Illinois used to be counted in this category, since Illinois was named for the Illiniwek tribal group and the school used an Indian chief with full headdress as its symbol for many years, as well as having an Indian-garbed mascot at games. Those images have been banished, and the claim is made that Fighting Illini referred to Civil War soldiers from Illinois originally, anyway, which would belong in 4B. Most of these remaining names are probably in danger. Although the opinion that they are insulting or, at the very least unacceptably insensitive, is not the majority one, it is strongly held. Florida State would seem to be in a pretty strong position for defending its name since the Seminole tribe of Florida likes ambien it. The same can be said about the Utes and the Chippewas.

The Aztecs aren’t exactly around to weigh in of the San Diego State name, but it almost escapes the Native American category by not belonging to a group within the USA. It’s more like Trojans or Spartans in belonging to a distant past. The strong association of the Aztecs with human sacrifice and cannibalism, however, makes the name problematic for me.

The Chicago Black Hawks (NHL) name might sound like it belongs to 1A with the birds of prey, but the team logo depicts a Native American in profile, and the team is evidently named for an Indian chief called Black Hawk. Having everybody called by one man’s name doesn’t make sense to me. It’s like calling a Memphis team the Elvises. Well, maybe when Black Hawks is taken to mean everyone on the team has adopted Black Hawk’s totem animal it’s marginally OK.

There is really only one team name in the category that explicitly points to race, 10C—the Washington Redskins. Whatever its problems, the Redskins name clearly would fit into one of the fierce historical fighter categories, as would all the other Indian-derived names would. Going only by the name, I’d have assumed Redskins would have gone into the ruthless raider subcategory 3B. Based on the reference to scalping in the original version of the team’s fight song, I think this was the intent. However, the team logo is similar to the dignified face in profile that was seen on the Indian-head nickel. It doesn’t promote a blood-thirsty image at all. I take the team owner at his word that he views the name in a positive light that honors the valor of the Native American warrior. Unless one takes the position that Native American images cannot be considered for sports team logos period, the logo seems fine. But what about the name? It’s different from all the other existing names with a Native American zithromax theme, in its reference to skin color.

It should be acknowledged that red has traditionally been used to designate the skin color of Native Americans, just as yellow has been for that of the Chinese. When Jesse Jackson spoke of creating a Rainbow Coalition he said “Our flag is red, white, and blue, but our nation is a rainbow—red, yellow, brown, black, and white.” He was certainly not meaning to offend anyone, on the contrary. I don’t recall anyone objecting. The point I’m making is that, however inaccurate using red for skin color is and how unnecessary it is to even use a color, it has been the standard, unthinking shorthand way of identifying Native Americans. Given that, I think the Redmen (U of Massachusetts and St. John’s) name was almost as defensible for a team name as Indians, when it was first used, but it’s just as well that it is gone. Incidentally, the Cleveland Indians logo, which is the red-as-a-lobster cartoon face of “Chief Wahoo,” really needs to be discarded, and that minimal act of respect wouldn’t require renaming the team.

But back to the Redskins name. It’s not enough to sincerely say you don’t mean the name in an offensive way. The historical usage and racial emphasis cannot be wished away. Forty years ago, before there was any controversy that I was aware of, an Austin poet pointed out to me, with a poet’s concision, that the name Washington Redskins was like Birmingham Niggers. This was shocking and, I realized upon reflection, basically true, though I hadn’t thought of it that way before then.

Redskins was a term of racial contempt applied by Whites to the native peoples of North America within the shameful historical context of getting them out of the way. The term emphasized the otherness, and implicitly the inferiority, of the Native Americans, and surely played its part in maintaining the mind-set that could justify their cruel prednisone treatment. We can’t forget the genocidal phrase: “The only good Injun is a dead Injun.”

The word Redskins, although it may have been used without thought or conscious prejudice in the past, is not uttered by any halfway sensitive person these days except in the context of NFL football. The name Redskins has to go, and it will go sooner or later. I want to propose a compromise solution, which means it will not satisfy anyone who has a strong position for keeping things just as they are or for eliminating all Native American associations with the team. It is meant as a compromise with a certain naturalness to it, given the team’s location in our nation’s capital. Who knows, maybe it will remind the politicians there what compromise for the common good is.

One step away from Redskins would be Indians, but that would not be far enough for the most adamant objectors to the current name, and there is a baseball team with the name already. Native Americans? That has become the political correct term, even though a considerable number of the persons to whom it applies still prefer to go by American Indian. Some who oppose the current name would strongly object, and defenders of the current name might feel moved to make a death struggle against political correctness and save the name Redskins. In any case, Native Americans can be thrown out as a name for having too many syllables, without considering it further. I don’t think anyone would suggest Senators or Congressmen, speaking of not wanting a name that’s widely held in contempt.

Here is my two-part proposal. First, keep the current logo (hopefully making the skin color a bit more realistic). Second, change the name to Washington Americans.

Keeping the logo (and the team should get rights to that as a trademark, which has been called into question recently, as a way of pressuring the team to change the name) would minimize damage to the value of the franchise and to the psyche of fans who see the logo as representing a team they support and have supported, some of them, for their whole conscious lives. Yes, many would persist in calling the team the Redskins, singing Hail to the Redskins, and bringing signs to games with the word Redskins on them, but so what? The official name, the name used in accounts and discussions of the team on national tv and press would be Americans. Over time, no one would be using the name Redskins. Those who believe no team should have a Native American image to represent it could continue that battle and perhaps try to confiscate all the Indian-head nickels while they’re at it. Sticklers for Native American usage could call the team the Washington Native Americans if they wanted to, though I don’t think that would be very widespread.

I see the combination of the name Americans with the Native American image for the team logo as a way of honoring the first Americans. Would Native Americans be offended instead of feeling honored? My guess is that most would not, but that could be part of the debate before the new name was adopted. As a name for a team in Washington DC, I think Americans is better than Nationals, using an actual noun to express more of less the same thing. The name Americans is proud, tough, and patriotic. Problem solved.

On the Naming of Sports Teams III: Colors, Abstractions, & Inanimate Objects

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2014

This is the third installment in my series of four posts on sports team naming. What nearly all the names in this post have in common is that they are not based on identifiable creatures that have ever walked the Earth, not on man nor beast. Those names either have no meaning outside the context of the team (Athletics, Astros) or refer to phenomena, abstractions, or objects that can’t be easily related to the human activity of sports competition (Hurricanes, Magic, Spurs), if at all.

In place of names like those considered in the previous posts (On the Naming of Sports Teams I: Animals & Birds, On the Naming of Sports Teams II: Non-Indian Warriors & Groups with Local Associations), which link a team to a species or historical group, thus implicitly allowing for the existence of individual personalities of the team members, some of these team names present monolithic regional symbols or indivisible abstractions. They conflate team loyalty with brand loyalty. It’s no coincidence, I’m sure, that most of the worst names are relatively recent ones given to professional teams formed in league expansion.

Evidently, the human mind can adjust to having a baseball team named for a mountain range (Rockies), even though it jars logic to think of the individual players as mountains, a paradigm of immobility. And a musical genre (Jazz), an abstraction which cannot logically be broken into parts for connecting to individual persons, presumably serves well enough as a team name, or at least as a placeholder for one. Still, I can’t help thinking that these illogical and homogenized names are like a background noise that one adjusts to, but which nonetheless causes ongoing psychic stress.

Let me put it this way: these team names are not of anything a child could pretend to be in play. Well, Marcel Proust, who might for a brief period of confusion at the edge of sleep imagine himself to be a string quartet, possibly could, but not an ordinary child. Would any child pretend to be a nugget, a spur, or a hurricane? These names are not play-worthy. That makes them, in my mind, unworthy of serving as a team’s name, and I’m glad to have hit upon the perfect criterion by which to judge whether a name is even worth considering.

Here are my proposed categories for the rest of the non-Indian team names. As with the earlier categories, there are some names that could fit into more than one category and some that don’t fit well into any of them, but which aren’t worth a new category. I give but one example for each subcategory in the listing, but mention more in the discussion that follows.

6. Colors

(A) plural (Reds)
(B) singular (Crimson)
(C) uniform identifiers (Red Sox)

7. Manufactured names

(A) adjectives as nouns (Athletics)
(B) local contrivances (Expos)
(C) abstractions (Magic)
(D) meaningless names (Hokies)

8. Forces of nature

(A) emphasizing the collective (Crimson Tide)
(B) weather phenomena (Lightning)
(C) destructive phenomena viewed as individuals (Hurricanes)

9. Inanimate objects

(A) associated with speed (Rockets)
(B) associated with location (Buckeyes)
(C) others (Nets)

In addition to names, all teams have at least one identifying color, which the team members and many fans wear or otherwise display. It is a secondary way of identifying with the team. Fans and followers of the teams may identify with the colors as much as with the names, and in some cases the team is just named after one of its colors. I think the naming of a team for a color has a quasi concreteness about it, because it is directly tied to the team without an intervening image or abstract mental excursion. In politics, if we hear Greens or Reds, we have an immediate idea of the group, and I think the same is true for teams named for colors.

Team names designated by color (6A) include the Cincinnati Reds, St. Louis Blues, Cleveland and (in the past) St. Louis Browns. The choice is one with ancient roots: chariot teams of Rome were identified by color, since it was the only way to tell them apart at a distance. The St. Louis Blues NHL team name is kind of a pun with a local reference, because of a famous song, but I’m calling it a color, which saves it from the abstractions category 7C, into which its kindred name Utah Jazz has been placed.

I had thought Harvard Crimson was the only team named for a singular color (6B), which abstractly emphasizes the group rather than its members. It’s different from Alabama’s Crimson Tide, where crimson modifies the noun representing the team. But as I wrote this, I discovered that Stanford goes by Cardinal, another shade of red that sounds derivative, but seems not to be, at least not completely. I had known that Stanford’s Cardinal referred to the color, as opposed to the bird, but I’d thought Stanford used the plural Cardinals. The old Stanford name Indians was nixed in 1972 as offensive, and I just saw on Wikipedia that they used the plural version Cardinals until the singular Cardinal was made the name by school president fiat. It does look a little like wanting to step into an elite circle of two with Harvard, but maybe it was only to get rid of the bird name confusion. I note that North Texas, though nominally still going by the name Eagles, has pretty much joined the singular color club with Harvard and Stanford, but with an adjective meant to be intimidating: Mean Green.

Teams identified by the color of their “Sox” (Chicago White Sox and Boston Red Sox) are really a variation on the team color category 5A, but with concrete imagery. There is some confusion about this, though, as an individual Boston player may be called by some a Red Sock, or even self-identify that way, as though the name belonged to the inanimate object category 9C. I think the absurdity of that image makes the point rather well that this is a team color name. The Cincinnati Reds were known for a time as the Cincinnati Redlegs, an awkward name chosen not for concreteness but to avoid the association with Communism that “Reds” evoked. Red Sox was already taken, and the old Red Stockings name probably sounded too effeminate, so they went with Redlegs from 1953 to 1959. This was such an unattractive name that it’s hard to believe they actually used it, but this was the time of “better dead than red,” so having an ugly name was a comparatively minor sacrifice.

It was a tough call whether to put the Detroit Red Wings name in 6C or 7D (for meaningless names), but since the wings are on the team uniforms, and the color is an essential part of the name, I decided to put it into the group with Red Sox.

Included in the names that are pluralized adjectives (7A) are the Oakland Athletics, Boston Celtics, Kansas City Royals, and Washington Nationals. The Oakland team uses a totem-animal elephant identifier as well, since there really isn’t any way to depict an “Athletic”. Royals actually could be considered a noun directly, as those of royal blood are called that. But I’ve already refused in the previous post to make a special category for kings. However dubious a grammatical practice this turning of adjectives into nouns may be, it’s clear these names are meant to apply to individual human beings, the players on the team, supposedly endowed with the characteristics specified in the name. These characteristics are more abstract than the wearing of a certain uniform item, but the principle of self-referential naming applies.

The locally contrived names (7B), which include Montreal Expos (in the past), Houston Astros, and Washington Capitals, go a step beyond the association of team members with defining characteristics to assigning them membership in nonexistent local groups. Still, the names are meant to apply to individual human beings. The problem with these names is that it’s even harder to picture them than those of 7A.

The MLB Expos of Montreal were an egregious example of the contrived local name category. Yes, there was a Worlds Fair in Montreal once, called the Expo, but it is ridiculous to call baseball players Expos. A worlds fair cannot be personified. The MLB Houston Astros also come to mind. There is no such thing as an Astro. It’s a prefix. I know Houston has a NASA Center, but this was a bad choice.

Washington Capitals? There is one national capital, and it’s a city. This name almost made it into the category of nonsensical names along with Suns, another unique thing used in the plural, but since it makes up a name (as applied to hockey players) with a tight local connection, I think the locally contrived name category is fitting.

Names that are abstractions include Orlando Magic, Miami Heat, Utah (formerly New Orleans) Jazz, New England Revolution, and Minnesota Wild. These are names that clearly have no intention of providing a way to visualize an individual team member from the team’s name (with the possible exception of the Revolution). This kind of name is my least favorite. I’m afraid I would ban them if I had the power as a league commissioner.

Jazz started out as at least a local reference in New Orleans, but makes no sense at all in Utah. Heat might arguably be placed in the weather phenomenon category 8B. Heat Wave would be, but Heat by itself is just too vague. It really only serves to suggest an unpleasant, inescapable experience, which is perhaps why the name has also been used as a slang term for the police (like Fuzz). I could live with Magicians, might even set up a special category for them with the Wizards, but Magic is the very worst team name of all.

I’m putting the New England Revolution in with the abstractions as well. As opposed to the Patriots and Minutemen names, which refer to individuals joined by a common name because of their making history together in a common cause, Revolution refers to a historical event or process, which in a sense stands above the participants. The Revolution name is much like the forces of nature names of category 8A.

Among names I call made-up and meaningless (7D) are Virginia Tech Hokies, Texas Tech Red Raiders, Buffalo Bills, San Diego Chargers, and Indiana Pacers. Silly as these are, they are like the locally contrived names of category 7A in inviting us to think of individual team members as being Hokies or Bills or whatever.

The name Hokies was deliberately chosen by students in the desire to have a completely meaningless, made-up name. In a way, it’s like choosing a color for a name, for there is no mental image of a Hokie to slow the mind’s transition from name to team.

Indiana Pacers is another dumb professional team name, meaning not much of anything, supposedly combining (abstractly) the pacing horse of harness racing with the pace car of the Indianapolis 500!

The San Diego Chargers might be thought of as spirited horses, but it turns out the owner liked the crowd shout of “Charge!” after the bugle call at ball games, and that is where the name came from. Who’s charging? To further confuse matters, the Chargers have something like a lightning bolt for the team symbol, which makes me think of AAA road service for a dead battery.

Texas Tech Red Raiders is a rare, if not unique, case of a name containing Red that has been certified not to refer to Native Americans. Originally named the Matadors, the team, which wore red uniforms, took on the Red Raiders name about the time a guy made a dramatic entrance on horseback before a game, bullfighter’s red cape now trailing behind him (like a superhero’s), eyes covered with a Lone Ranger or Zorro mask. This became a tradition and presumably defines what a Red Raider is supposed to look like. The idea of a whole group of caped Lone Ranger lookalikes is comical though. It is possible to imagine kids pretending to be this kind of Red Raider, but it is still a made-up name that only looks good compared to names like Buffalo Bills.

What about the Buffalo Bills? Buffalo Bill Cody was a real person. He made a name for himself killing bison by the thousands to feed railroad workers, then formed a touring Wild West show. So, since buffaloes don’t have bills, and I can’t think of what a generic bill would be, I am forced to picture a bunch of identical guys with a certain kind of beard and wearing western garb, brandishing rifles. What does their sideline cartoon character look like? A blue buffalo. So, possibly without realizing it, they are trying to get back to the safety of a totem animal, which presumably even has some historical local connection, given the city’s name.

The Phoenix Suns are put in category 7D for want of a better place. Everyone knows what the Sun is, so it is not a made-up name in that sense. Maybe kings and suns should go into a special category for names of magnificence, which become absurd when applied to a whole team. But there logically can be multiple kings for multiple kingdoms, while there is only one Sun, which makes Suns possibly the most ridiculous of all team names. Yes, I know that the Sun is but one of many of stars, but there is only one Sun. This choice of name seems an attempt to sell what the desert has plenty of, but without stopping to think it through. Sunrays would make more sense, which is not to say it would be good. If a Sun reference is desired, the name Phoenix Sunburns would convey the idea of inflicting pain on opponents without the Satanic imagery of Arizona State’s Sun Devils. Sunstrokes might be even better, as that name evokes images of opponents brought to the ground.

Names that are forces of Nature, which in the singular are presumably meant to bring to mind a team’s powerful collective action, include Alabama Crimson Tide, Tulsa Golden Hurricane, Colorado Avalanche, Tulane Green Wave, Chicago Fire (MLS), and Colorado Rapids (MLS).

It’s possible for members of a team and their fans to think of themselves as part of a collective that works together to make a powerful whole, so that taken together the group could be called, symbolically, the Crimson Tide or the Golden Hurricane. If an army could be given such a nickname, then it could work for a team. Natural forces, especially those of the irresistible or devastating type are sometimes chosen. Tulsa’s Golden Hurricane (singular) makes more sense than Miami U’s 8C plural Hurricanes name, but it seems odd to an outsider, since a golden hurricane is not easily pictured, unlike the Green Wave of Tulane, which brings to mind something like a tidal wave, even if a wave of green-clad athletes is meant. Note that Alabama, like Oakland, has chosen an elephant as a visual totem-animal representation of the team.

The Chicago Fire references a famous local destructive event, and fits into 8A as well as any other category. I guess it didn’t bother the namers that the fire destroyed much of the city the team represents. I’m not sure whether the Colorado Rapids are supposed to be admired like the Rockies are feared like the Avalanche, but I can’t think of a better place to put them than here. Rapid is an adjective, so they could also be, secondarily (as a pun), an example of an adjective turned into a noun to denote individuals (7A).

The singular noun weather names (8B), Oklahoma City Thunder and Tampa Bay Lightning (NHL), are both associated with the same frightful phenomenon. Except for having the notions of sudden action, danger, and impressive sensory stimuli in their favor, they are like Heat in being abstractions difficult to identify human beings with. They are something like the names of 8A. But, since they are intermittent phenomena, not as easily associated with massive group activity, I think they deserve a separate category. Thunder Claps and Lightning Bolts would go into 8C.

Category 8C contains names that implicitly identify the team’s players with destructive phenomena through the use of the plural. These include Iowa State Cyclones, Miami and Carolina Hurricanes, Calgary Flames (NHL), and San Jose Earthquakes (MLS).

Hurricanes are really too big to associate with individuals, even in the imagination, but the Miami University (FL) and Carolina NHL teams make the attempt. Cyclones in Iowa are tornadoes. These are at least confined to a smaller area and thus a little easier to associate with individual players, but nothing about a bunch of tornadoes suggests co-ordinated action. Flames are the plural representation of fire, which can be viewed as a destructive natural phenomenon. I thought Hurricanes covered too large an area to make sense, but Earthquakes take the prize for sheer physical extent, not to mention impossibility of visualization.

Inanimate objects that at least move through space rapidly have been chosen to name the Houston Rockets, New York and Winnipeg Jets, Seattle Supersonics (in the past), and Baltimore Bullets (in the past).

The Houston Rockets NBA team, like the city’s MLB team, the Astros (7B), uses a space theme to associate it with the local NASA center. Rockets are as inanimate as Spurs and Nuggets (see below), but they are at least speedily mobile and self-propelled and, unlike the Astros, refer to something beyond the team itself. Jets and Supersonics (now defunct) are also fast and self-propelled, though none of them can purposefully guide themselves. Now that I think of it, could the name of the New York Jets also contain a West Side Story allusion? If so, the Jets could be street-gang members instead of airplanes, which could move them to category 4D. There’s no such possibility for the NHL Winnipeg team though.

The Jets and Rockets could raise the question of whether they satisfy my criterion of being things a child might pretend to be in play. I suppose that, in a way, I pretended to be a fighter plane, when as a boy I made the sounds of a diving Hellcat on a strafing run, guns firing, my arms outstretched for wings, but that imaginary plane was just a prop for what I saw myself as—the plane’s pilot. So I still say no to Jets and Rockets, and the criterion was only for being considered, anyway.

The Baltimore Bullets (9A) NBA team of the past, sort of melded the ideas behind the Colt 45s (see below) and the Houston Rockets, but alliteration was surely a factor. Bullets are mere projectiles, however, dependent on being shot from a gun to attain their speed. After the team had been in its new home in Washington DC for a while, it was decided that Washington Bullets was unseemly for the nation’s capital, especially given the city’s high murder rate. So the team namers went for alliteration again and came up with Wizards, an unfortunate name that fits none of my categories, but doesn’t seem worthy of having one all to itself.

Inanimate objects with a local connection of some sort have provided names to the San Antonio Spurs, Ohio State Buckeyes, Houston (formerly) Colt 45s, Toronto Maple Leafs, Denver Nuggets, Detroit Pistons, and Columbus Blue Jackets.

In the same way as White Sox identifies a Chicago team by a uniform part, the San Antonio Spurs name might be suitable for a rodeo team of some sort, though it would need to add a distinguishing adjective (Silver Spurs?). But basketball players don’t wear spurs. As a standalone name, Spurs is pretty weak, in my mind. Literally speaking, who wants to be a Spur? It’s like the laughable reference to a Boston player as a Red Sock. The great success of the San Antonio NBA team has made its name seem more plausible than it really is. But at least spurs are concrete, which makes them superior to names that are just flagyl abstractions.

An interesting, and at first puzzling, inanimate object name with a local connection belongs to the Ohio State Buckeyes. The Buckeye is a tree, or the inedible nut from that tree. Ohio evidently became known as the Buckeye State during the Presidential election of 1840. I can’t help thinking that the choosing of the name Buckeyes was done without much thought as to what a Buckeye really was. They have actually made the sideline cartoon fellow be a personified nut. I guess the Buckeye is in a sense a totem tree, but I think there’s an element of the adjective (as in Buckeye State) turned into noun effect through its use in the plural (like Athletics), which explains the name better, even though I’m leaving it in 9B. Of course, as with any successful team’s name, a Buckeye is by now someone who plays for Ohio State.

The Maple Leafs (why not Leaves?) obviously must come from the Canadian flag, right? Actually the team name came long before the adoption of the current flag. The maple leaf emblem had been on the uniforms of Canadian soldiers in WWI, though, and that is presumably why Maple Leafs was chosen for the team, whose members would also wear the symbol. An argument could be made to put this name in with uniform identifiers (6C). In any case, even as an inanimate object name, Maple Leafs is a great improvement over the team’s previous name—St. Pats—which is even more absurd than ambien Buffalo Bills.

I recall that the Houston MLB team, like the Spurs, was first identified with inanimate objects with a Texas Wild West theme, but in the weapons category. The Houston Colt 45s was a name which could not be sustained.

The Denver Nuggets name probably stands alone in being totally inanimate, inert, inorganic, and not a product of human manufacture. How can fans urge a pile of rocks into action? How could I have forgotten? Writing the phrase “pile of rocks” actually brought to mind another team name that comes pretty close: the Colorado Rockies (referred to above in an introductory paragraph, actually written later). Must be something about Colorado. Blue Jackets is not much of a name, but the other finalist for the Columbus NHL team name was Justice, which would have been much worse.

Inanimate object names that don’t fit well into other categories are Brooklyn Nets and Buffalo Sabres. The NBA Nets (then New York) name was clearly chosen to rhyme with the already existing NFL Jets and MLB Mets, and is pretty meaningless. Yes, I get the basketball net reference, but who wants to be a Net, which just hangs from the rim passively? Sabres are inanimate slashing weapons, perhaps chosen because of a certain resemblance to skate viagra blades.

The terrible sports team name game is easy to play. Choose something inanimate or abstract, preferably with a geographical tie-in and alliterative with the locale. What about New Orleans Mardi Gras or Chicago Mob? Los Angeles Freeways or Newark Needles? Fresno Frenzy or Carolina Calm? Houston Hiphop or Raleigh Rap? Jacksonville Judgment or Tennessee Truth? Seattle Nirvana (trademark issue?), Kansas City Karma, Denver High, or Hollywood Egos? Michigan Mystery or Cincinnati Certainty? Madison Affair or DC Drones? Wouldn’t London Plague be a devastating name for an NFL expansion team? Hawaii Lava or Washington Eruptions? Atlantic City Ocean or Montana Sky? Sad to say, some of those sound like realistic candidates for future team names.

My final post on the topic of sports team names will be devoted to names based on Native American warriors and tribes. There I will present my solution to the problem of the Washington Redskins
viagra name.

On the Naming of Sports Teams II: Non-Indian Warriors & Groups with Local Associations

Wednesday, October 8th, 2014

This is the second installment of my thoughts on the naming of sports teams, leading up to my proposal for dealing with the Washington Redskins name, which will appear a couple of posts later, to universal applause, I’m sure. In my previous blog post, I discussed the very popular use of animals and birds for names and suggested categories into which the names could be organized.

Here are my proposed categories for the next-most popular type of team names, those in which either the fierce animals are replaced by fierce human beings or the less fierce totem-like animals are replaced by people having a special association with the team’s home territory. Team names that are Beings of Good or Evil, though few in number, seem to warrant a category of their own. As before, I give only one example for each subcategory in the list, but mention more in the discussion that follows. I am saving the discussion of the use of names associated with Native Americans, which naturally belong in the categories 3 or 4 below, for a separate treatment in the last post of the series.

3. Fierce fighters from history or myth (non-local)

(A) brave warriors (Spartans)
(B) ruthless plunderers (Raiders)
(C) mythical (Titans)

4. Groups with local associations

(A) historical non-military (Sooners)
(B) historical military (Minutemen)
(C) occupational (Steelers)
(D) representative / emblematic (Texans)
(E) students at the school (Cadets)

5. Beings of Good or Evil

(A) Good (Angels)
(B) Evil (Blue Devils)

I’ve suggested that naming teams after animals is psychologically akin to the choosing of animals as emblems for totem groups. Names based on groups of historical people come closer to actual identification, being roughly equivalent to veneration of heroes or honoring of ancestors. Although most people probably don’t think about it more than they do for teams named after animals, I wonder if this doesn’t unnecessarily elevate some bloodthirsty qualities in the case of fierce fighter names, especially, of course, those of category 3B, with whom no one should want to identify.

Among historical brave warrior names (3A) are the Michigan St. Spartans, USC Trojans, and Holy Cross Crusaders.

There are numerous teams with Native American warrior names, but I’m putting that discussion off for later. It’s really striking how few of the non-Indian warrior names there are. Were the Spartans chosen over their formidable military rivals, the Athenians, because Sparta’s side ultimately won the Peloponnesian War? It’s probably because Athens is more renowned for its philosophers than its fighters, while the severe military culture of the Spartans automatically makes one think of warriors. Winning can’t be the only criterion for being deemed worthy of a team’s name, or how would the Trojans, who lost to the Achaeans, get the honor? Have the Achaeans been left out of naming because they had to use a ruse to conquer Troy? Or is it just because most people would call Troy’s besiegers Greeks, which wouldn’t work as a name due to modern associations that would override any Homeric allusion? Romans can be ruled out on similar grounds. Somehow the Trojans managed also to get a condom brand named after them, so clearly they are the ultimate winners in terms of lasting name recognition.

Some would no doubt object to my including the Crusaders in category 3A, since they are typically viewed these days as early European imperialists, conquering and oppressing the Arabs of the Holy Land, centuries before the next wave of British and French came to dominate the region. In fact, the European knights who waged the Crusades were at a technological disadvantage, but nevertheless managed through their zeal, courage, and battle skills to win and hold a good chunk of territory in the Holy Land for decades. And it should be remembered that the Crusades occurred in the context of centuries-old Arab rule of Portugal and Spain. The clash between the warriors of Islam and Christendom in the Crusades of the Middle Ages went on for almost two centuries, far surpassing in length the wars in which the Trojans and Spartans fought; not to mention the Punic wars between the Romans and Carthaginians (neglected also). Saracens, as the European crusaders called their Arab warrior opponents, might make a good name in the historical warrior category, but it will never be chosen, especially in the context of modern Jihadism. I have to wonder how long the College of the Holy Cross will hold on to the Crusader name.

To the ruthless plunderers category 3B I would assign the Minnesota Vikings, Oakland Raiders, Pittsburgh Pirates, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Idaho Vandals.

I’m sure that, beyond their image of ferocity, part of the attraction of these category 3B names is their association with anarchic freedom and adventure. But this is anarchic freedom with respect to those who are being raped, killed, enslaved, and plundered; and the adventure is in the hunt for new human prey. Someone looking for a name-changing moral crusade (oops, that word!) might want to consider eliminating names of category 3B before going after Native American names equivalent to those of category 3A.

The name Idaho Vandals, while evoking images of juvenile window breakers, makes reference to the “barbarians” that sacked Rome in 455 A.D., an allusion which few are likely to get without help. I wonder why the Vandals were chosen over the Visigoths, who also sacked Rome? Syllable count perhaps. Other invaders that terrorized Europe, such as the Mongols and Huns have also been shut out of the ruthless plunderer name category. As I will say more than once, I think the fewer of these kind of names the better, so I’m not proposing them for new teams.

Given the merciless way the inhabitants of conquered cities were usually treated in ancient times, the distinction between brave historical warriors and ruthless plunderers may seem to rest more on what characteristics the namers have sought to attach to their teams (martial virtues or sheer ferocity, roughly) than to degrees of savagery. But Trojans and Spartans did abide by some rules of war, such as truces for burial of the dead, recognizing places of sanctuary, and keeping (for a while anyway) of treaties, and there was an element of patriotism or a higher cause in their struggles. This sets them apart from marauders like pirates, who were thieving cutthroats out for bloody personal gain and nothing more.

I think the association of a team with fierce human fighters risks taking on their moral shortcomings in a way that identification with blameless wild animals doesn’t. Mythical warriors (3C) such as the New York and San Francisco Giants and the Tennessee Titans are more like animals in that regard. The Houston Oilers (4C), when they moved to Nashville, became the Tennessee Titans (obviously chosen for alliteration, 3C), that name being available because earlier the New York Titans (lame New York Giants imitation, given the location) chose a rhyming name (Jets) when the New York Mets got a MLB franchise.

In the case of local associations, the names are an assertion of local pride, whether in city or in State, at least in the beginning; but sometimes the association fades and the meaning of a name becomes obscure to everyone, eventually coming to mean little beyond the athletic team itself. The transformation of an obscure local group reference into an animal totem sometimes occurs, as I mentioned in the previous blog post on animal names for the case of the Oregon Webfoots (people, 4A) becoming Ducks. Similar examples are mentioned below.

To the category 4A (historical non-military) belong the Oklahoma Sooners; Dallas, Wyoming, and Oklahoma St. Cowboys; Virginia Cavaliers; Texas Rangers; North Carolina Tar Heels; San Francisco 49ers; Philadelphia 76ers; San Diego Padres; New England Patriots (see discussion); Seattle Mariners; Notre Dame Fighting Irish (see discussion); and New York Knickerbockers and Yankees.

The Cavaliers are borderline military. So are the 76ers and Patriots through their ties to the American Revolution. The Cowboys and Mariners could arguably be put in the occupational 4C category, but the historical association seems stronger to me. There are several other team names in category 4 for which the subcategory is not clearcut, but their existence is not sufficient reason to dissolve the boundaries between subcategories, in my mind.

The Sooners were, strictly speaking, cheaters, as they were the early bird homesteaders that went into Oklahoma to claim land well before they were authorized to in 1889, but I guess they get credit for their initiative, and they got to keep the land they claimed. Oklahoma was supposed to be Indian Territory, but there’s nothing unique about that kind of takeback. Given the Oklahoma football team’s success over the decades, Sooners has become a name that defines a team, rather like the Dodgers and Lakers names do, making the historical reference largely irrelevant.

North Carolina’s Tar Heels name seems to be the local equivalent of Hillbillies (and might go into either 4A or 4D depending on whether the historical aspect is emphasized). Similarly, since the Texas Rangers (State law enforcement officers) still exist, they could arguably be paired with Houston’s Texans as representatives of the State in 4D, but I think the historical association is stronger. The 49ers (4A) of San Francisco could evoke the frenzy of a gold rush, but they also are a case where the team has come to define the name rather than the reverse.

The New York Knickerbockers name (Google it) probably fits best into 4A, given its roots in stories of New Amsterdam. Now everyone just says Knicks, and few probably know how the name originated, but I think everyone feels Knicks are somehow New Yorkers. This is just another of the team names that might be placed in either 4A or 4D, depending on how current the usage of the name is deemed in denoting inhabitants of the team’s territory.

It’s hard to say where to put Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish, as it’s a name that brings to mind short-tempered brawlers (who may have had too much to drink) rather than warriors. I think historical association with tough Irish Catholic immigrants is the best way to look at it, making the name a sort of extension of category 4A.

Historical military names (4B) include the Massachusetts Minutemen, Mississippi Rebels, Tennessee Volunteers, and (originally) Kansas Jayhawks.

The U. of Massachusetts Minutemen name is a nice example of 4B. The name was originally the Redmen, but that was wisely abandoned for one having a local historical military connection. The New England Patriots name is in the same general line, though the name Patriots associated with Boston in particular evokes memories of Paul Revere, Sam Adams, and the Boston Tea Partiers, as well as those who fired the shots heard round the world, and I have placed Patriots in 4A. The original Patriots logo, which was sort of comical, showed a guy wearing a three-cornered hat (making it clear that the reference was to the time of the American Revolution) and down in center position with a football. The current logo shows instead the face of a nonexistent comic book superhero “Patriot,” known locally as the “Flying Elvis.” Imagine a whole team of those characters. Ugly vision.

The Rebels of the University of Mississippi are named for those who took up arms in support of secession from the United States in order to preserve the institution of slavery. That is the fact. Of course, many rebels fought bravely and most were not personally slaveholders, but this is a case where courage can’t be separated from the cause it supported. The Civil War does not belong to the forgotten past, and the riots that accompanied the enrollment of the first Black man, James Meredith, at the University in 1962 are a century closer. There is now a statue of Meredith at the University, and the Confederate officer sideline mascot has been transformed into a “Rebel Black Bear,” but the team name remains Rebels, and it should also be retired.

The Kansas Jayhawks name (4B, originally) is a quasi-military historical reference, made even more obscure by the metamorphosis of the Jayhawk into a cartoonish totem bird. The Jayhawks fought on the anti-slavery side in Kansas before the Civil War, and, in reality, may have been more like marauders than minutemen, but they have receded into the mists of history. A mythical bird is now used to depict the Jayhawk, since the totem animal (1A) impulse has once again triumphed, as it did with the Oregon Ducks. The “Jayhawk” does not look much like a hawk. It resembles Heckle and Jeckle, a pair of cartoon magpies, though with a somewhat curved bill, to suggest hawk. It is hard to imagine a large group of these cartoon birds, as the plural of a team name implies.

Names associated with local occupations (4C) include: Pittsburgh Steelers; Purdue Boilermakers; Green Bay Packers; Nebraska Cornhuskers; UTEP Miners; and Edmonton (also in the past, Houston) Oilers.

I would imagine most colleges with occupation-based names gain nothing from them for out-of-state recruiting of athletes. If you grow up in Nebraska, you may take pride in the name, but if you were from California would Cornhuskers be attractive? At least it’s a lot more attractive than the team’s original name of Bugeaters (a local bat, 2A). Still, with enough success, the team defines the name, and the name can become an asset.

In the 4D category I would put the New York Mets and Islanders, Houston Texans, West Virginia Mountaineers, and Ottawa (also in the past, Washington) Senators.

The Senators name sticks out in that group as one that applies only to a small number of the city’s inhabitants, but it doesn’t seem right to file it under occupational. The name is just a way of stating the town is a seat of government, and not just historically.

The name of the New York Mets (4D) is a short form of Metropolitans, which seems quite appropriate for a NYC team, since the shortened form is used when speaking of the Metropolitan Museum or the Metropolitan Opera. Through rhyming imitation, though, the Mets name inspired the unfortunate inanimate object Jets and Nets names.

The Los Angeles Dodgers (originally trolley dodgers) name was a kind of local reference in their early Brooklyn days, but now it’s just a name with a lot of baseball tradition and no particular meaning beyond baseball. Dodgers could be assigned to 4D with an asterisk. The same thing might be said of the Los Angeles Lakers name, which made sense when the team was in Minneapolis.

The Boston MLB team is lucky to have shed Beaneaters, an early 4D name. I assume the Iowa Hawkeyes would originally have gone into 4A or 4D, but following the totem-transformation principle, they are now indistinguishable from hawks (1A), though I can’t say much for the quality of their logo.

College teams named after the members of the student body (4E) include Army Cadets, Navy Midshipmen, and Texas A&M Aggies. The military academies’ students shed those names upon graduation, but an Aggie is an Aggie for life. At least it was so in the past when A&M was all-male and required ROTC, and I imagine it still is for most. I remember hearing an Aggie friend of my (non-Aggie) father say that he had decided there were only two kinds of people in the world: Aggies and non-Aggies.

Beings of Good (5A) include the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and the New Orleans Saints, though both need an asterisk.

While I’ve designated the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim as the example of a team named for Beings of Good (5A), which is technically true, the name may be better suited to an extended view of 4A or 4D, since it comes from the Spanish name for the Ciudad de los Angeles, thus making Angels a historical association, though not with an actual human group, and also emblematic. The New Orleans Saints name is in rather a similar position, since it obviously comes from historical association of the city with the famous jazz hymn, rather than with an actual group of people. Within Catholic Church tradition, I think Saints would be classified as 5A, since no one becomes recognized as a Saint while alive on this Earth, and such recognition requires miracles of intercession to have been made through said Saint, verified to the satisfaction of the Church. The 5A classification probably makes as much sense as any, though I have no idea what is in the mind of New Orleans football fans. As with many teams, the team has come to define the name to the point where the word Saints makes many people think of football, just as Yankees makes them think of baseball.

In category 5B are the Duke Blue Devils, Wake Forest Demon Deacons, Arizona St. Sun Devils, and New Jersey Devils.

Except for one (sort of, supposedly), the teams named for beings of Evil (5B) have no excuse of history or geography to justify their choice. The namers just wanted to symbolically acquire the power of Evil and the ability to inflict the pains of Hell, judging from their team logos. I’m sure this is all meant tongue in cheek and not really thought of for the most part, as is the case of all team names. Still, I think this is a bad idea, even worse than identifying the team with ruthless felons.

The Jersey Devil is supposedly a legendary, chimeric creature said to inhabit the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, but the team logo clearly has horns and a pointed tail on the J of NJ, and the arena “mascot” is made to resemble the traditional depiction of Satan; so whatever the origin of the name, it’s associated with the Evil One or his cohorts now. The Arizona St. logo is a horned, tailed, pitch-forked Devil. Now, for those who don’t believe in supernatural evil powers, the choice of devils for the team name may seem something like the choice of Titans, a mythological sort of unrestrained afflictive force, carrying no more moral responsibility than the choice of blameless animals. I think, however, the strong identification of devils with Evil, whether or not one believes in them, makes them unworthy of providing names to a team. Interestingly, the Duke Blue Devils and Wake Forest Demon Deacons (what a combination!) were, when the names were chosen, at least, schools in close relations with Protestant churches, having loosely used Methodists and Baptists as team names earlier.

The NBA Sacramento Kings don’t fit into any of my categories, and don’t warrant having one of their own. They were the Cincinnati Royals (originally with alliteration in Rochester) before moving to Kansas City, which already had the Kansas City Royals MLB team. Keeping the connection to royalty, while regaining alliteration with the name Kansas City Kings, may have seemed like a no-brainer, but the idea of a whole team consisting of kings seems pretty ludicrous to me. Still, it’s only a little more problematic than one made up solely of chiefs, which Kansas City already had in its NFL team at the time the name was chosen. An opportunity was missed to change the name from Kings when the team moved to Sacramento. I just noticed the Old Dominion Monarchs, so there’s at least one other name like the Kings, but I am not adding a category for hereditary rulers anyway. Whoa, I forgot the Los Angeles Kings NHL team (Stanley Cup Champions!). If I ever revise this analysis (unlikely), I’ll have to think about adding monarchs.

I think that if I were naming a team, I would choose either an animal name, a color identifier, or a local non-military group association, avoiding even a hint of glorifying historical butchery or support for a bad cause. The next installment in this series will deal with team names that are abstractions, forces of nature, or inanimate objects.

On the Naming of Sports Teams I: Animals & Birds

Monday, September 29th, 2014

My foolhardy and woefully unfulfilled goal back when I started this blog was to have one post per week. But that was before the App Store called and before I got on Twitter (@onscrn). I think I may be able to meet that schedule at least for the next few weeks. So, stay tuned. 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.

First, I mean to discuss and analyze this phenomenon and then to provide a solution to the problem of the Washington Redskins name. Rather than do all this in a single post, as I had ativan 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.

Why do sports teams need names anyway? There is a practical aspect. “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. Primitive societies subdivide tribes into totem groups, each group identified with and named for a specific animal or bird. Nor can we overlook the lions and dragons of heraldry or the eagles of the Roman legions. The emblem gives a sense of reality to an abstract concept of group membership. That is easiest, of course, when the name is concrete instead of abstract. 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.

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. Very few team names have more than three syllables, and I can’t think of any with more than four. So shortness is a criterion. The name needs to be easily shouted in cheers. Alliteration, as in Jacksonville Jaguars and Pittsburgh Pirates, is obviously a feature that team namers love.

In this blog post and the following three, I shall take a stab at defining the various categories into which team names fall. I’ll be giving a single example in category itemization, but will mention more in the discussions that follow. 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. It should serve to organize the discussion though. My ideas on where the various Native American team names fit into this scheme will be presented in the final post of the series. Here are the first two of my categories, the ones I discuss in this post.

1. Fierce animals and birds

(A) wild predators (Lions, Hawks)
(B) belligerent male herbivores (Bulls)
(C) other combative “domesticated” animals (Bulldogs, Gamecocks)
(D) stinging insects & venomous reptiles (Hornets, Diamondbacks)

2. Totem animals and birds, not noted as fierce

(A) local (Horned Frogs, Orioles)
(B) non-local (Huskies, Owls)
(C) humorous/offbeat (Anteaters)

I haven’t made a survey, but animals and birds would seem to provide the most team names. 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. 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. Cougars; Carolina, Florida (NHL), and Pitt Panthers; Jacksonville Jaguars; Kentucky and Kansas St. Wildcats; Minnesota Timberwolves; Michigan Wolverines; Florida ‘Gators, to name a few of the current professional and college team names. The prevalence of feline predators is notable, probably due to the suddenness of their attacks. Fierce feathered predators (1A) include: Philadelphia and Boston College Eagles; Atlanta Hawks and Falcons; and Seattle Sea Hawks (Ospreys). 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.

Sometimes these animals also have a geographical association with the team, as the ‘Gators with Florida. Historically speaking anyway, most of the North American mammals and birds probably have some geographical connection with the teams whose names they supply. Non-mammalian animal names, such as Gators, for teams are pretty rare, presumably because it’s harder to identify with a Gator than, say, a fellow mammal like a Bear.

Herbivores, both wild and domesticated, if perceived as strong and dangerous, may also be chosen as a team’s fierce animal image (1B), e.g. Chicago Bulls, St. Louis and Fordham Rams, Milwaukee Bucks, and Colorado Buffaloes. Bulls, Rams, and Bucks make the association with aggressive males specific. The Dallas Mavericks, viewed as adult males, rather than calves or generic cattle, could fit into 1B also. Of course my Texas Longhorns, a name with obvious local associations as well, are in this category. I don’t know what their dispositions are like, but those intimidating horns could impale a person or other large mammal, which is why Bevo, the sideline animal, is actually a testosterone-limited steer instead of a bull.

I think other domesticated animals with a reputation for combativeness are worth a separate subcategory (1C). Bulldogs (Georgia) were bred for the cruel sport of bull-baiting and are feared watchdogs today. South Carolina’s Gamecocks are fighting non-predatory birds, though it’s illegal to actually set them on each other for sport these days. I’ll put the Arkansas Razorbacks (feral swine) into 1C, but a case could be made for expanding 1B to include these pigs, since these non-predators are reputedly just mean by nature and were not bred to fight. One could also make a case for putting hawks and falcons in category 1C, given their use in the sport of falconry.

Even more difficult to identify with than the Florida Gator is the Arizona Diamondback (rattlesnake, 1D), but there is again a geographical association, and there’s no denying the things are intimidating. Ditto for the San Jose Sharks (1A), who really don’t have much of a geographical argument in their favor. The Georgia Tech Yellowjackets and Charlotte Hornets (1D) sacrifice all pretense to intelligence to maximize the intimidation factor, in a way that suggests a swarming onslaught. I think I’d rather support a team with a more intelligent animal than a reptile or insect as its namesake, but I suppose one gets used to it. If I can support a team designated by the color of its “Sox,” why not?

A handsome bird such as a Baltimore Oriole (2A), Toronto Blue Jay, or St. Louis Cardinal is sometimes chosen with or without strong local association, instead of a raptor, but never an ugly or overly common bird such as a sparrow. And never a carrion eater, or one whose diet is primarily carrion, anyway. I had assumed Oregon’s Ducks would naturally fit into category 2A or 2B, but a Wikipedia article revealed that the original team name was Webfoots, which referred to some early human settlers, thus corresponding to category 4A (to be revealed in the next post). The image and name of the webfooted bird has taken over, though, and has assumed a totem-like role. I imagine the charming Delaware Blue Hen is a local totem bird (2A). The New Orleans Pelicans are surely local totem birds, as I can recall when Louisiana license plates had a pelican on them. The owl (1A or 2B) is carnivorous and brings death to small animals just as surely as other flying predators, while lacking the speed of the falcon or the grandeur of the eagle. The owl carries a certain mystique associated with silent, nocturnal flight and its supposed wisdom, and Rice and Temple Universities have chosen the owl as their symbol.

My favorite of all bird names belongs to the minor league baseball Toledo Mud Hens (2A). We called coots mud hens in Texas too. I’ve been wishing Toledo could get a major league team just for the name. The Mud Hens may be an exception to the rule I postulated above that no ugly birds would serve for a team name. I knew they had to be a local totem bird, (2A) because how else would they have come up with the name? Wikipedia confirmed that the original ball park was located next to a marsh inhabited by American Coots. The Atlanta Thrashers, formerly an NHL team, were obviously a local totem bird (Georgia’s State bird is the Brown Thrasher) with a tough-sounding name in the context. The U of Texas at San Antonio Roadrunners would seem to fit nicely into category 2A, as roadrunners are plentiful around San Antonio and are not perceived to be fierce. They are a bit like the owl and badger in having a case for technical inclusion in 1A, since they actually prey on lizards, rodents, and snakes, not just insects. But perception is paramount in a team symbol, and the cartoon Roadrunner has formed people’s impression of the bird, at least where it is not native, so some might perceive the name as belonging to category 2C. Anaheim Ducks began as a Disney film tie-in (Mighty Ducks), but have since moved into the totem category (dropping the “Mighty”), as is the natural tendency.

The Beaver of Oregon St. is obviously a geographically linked totem animal (2A) since the State flag of Oregon displays a beaver. Minnesota Gophers (2A or 2C?) is an odd name, since the small rodents are usually viewed as varmints. They gain some prestige (hinting at something magical?) by being called the Golden Gophers, and, I must assume, gophers are plentiful in Minnesota. An alternative breakdown of “non-fierce” totem animals might have been into spirited and placid ones. The Wisconsin Badgers (2B, 1A) don’t sound all that intimidating, though I wouldn’t try reaching into a badger burrow, and they certainly prey on gophers. I imagine they would go into the spirited subcategory, while the gophers and beavers probably wouldn’t. The TCU Horned Frogs (actually lizards) fit the local non-fierce totem category (2A), but their thorny skin and horns do give them an intimidating appearance. To me, as a kid, they were just the “horny toads” we used to pick up by the tail for fun. They puff themselves up to appear more formidable and are known for squirting blood from their eyes to thwart predators. Despite their appearance, they are really about as placid as could be and are less intelligent, even, than gophers.

Unbroken horses like SMU’s Mustangs and Denver’s Broncos can do a lot of damage with their hooves, even if they are less likely to charge than a bull or bison, and they are certainly swift (another prized descriptor for a sports team) and spirited. They might belong in 2A, given the western locations of the teams they symbolize. The committee that chose the name for the Washington Huskies made a rather strained case for its referring to a totem animal with a local connection, saying Seattle was recognized as the “Gateway to the Alaskan frontier,” but I’m calling it non-local (2B). The Husky name replaced the local group reference name Sundodgers, which might belong in the comical made-up name category tramadol (7D in later post).

Some relatively recent names are of aquatic animals not normally thought of as fierce, but associated with the area of Florida teams: Miami Marlins, Tampa Bay Rays, and Miami Dolphins. I’d call them all totem animals with a geographical tie (2A). Chicago’s Cubs are the only example that comes to mind of a team named for a baby animal. Since they have not matured yet into fierce predators, I’m putting them in 2B. Wait, what about the Indianapolis Colts? Since they started in Baltimore, I’m thinking they were envisioned as old enough to race, not wobbly foals. The Pittsburgh Penguins of NHL hockey were no doubt chosen for the alliteration, as well as for seeming at home on the ice, but technically they belong to 2B.

There aren’t very many names that belong in the comical or semicomical category 2C. I think they are basically mistakes, as they display a certain contempt for the idea of sports team allegiance. But even for these names, the totem principle asserts itself. Anteaters for example. I have no doubt that the 60‘s choice was meant as a kind of parody choice when selected by student vote, but now they actually have Anteater pride at UC Irvine. Bowdoin once went by the Fighting Pine Trees, but later became Polar Bears. Stanford’s sideline mascot dresses as a tree now, but how long will this last? I had assumed the Tufts Jumbos (circus elephant) must belong in this class, but the truth was a little different. P. T. Barnum was a Tufts alum, and he donated the stuffed actual Jumbo to the school. Supposedly, the coaches and athletes decided to become Jumbos. Unfortunately, the remains of Jumbo were consumed in a fire in 1975. Given the Barnum connection, I think category 2A is appropriate for the Jumbos. I have a problem with a whole team being named after an individual though. UConn Huskies (get it?), as distinguished from the serious totem (quasi local) animal, the Washington Huskies, must have been chosen for the chuckle value originally, but I’m sure it is now a serious totem animal. I can only think of one team using an extinct animal in its name: Toronto Raptors, which doesn’t seem worth making a separate (accutane) category.

My next post will deal with teams named after fierce warriors or groups associated with regions, exclusive of Native Americans.

Thoughts of Water on the Eve of Obama’s Inauguration

Monday, January 19th, 2009

Certainly everyone recognizes that the election of Barack Obama, a man with a Black African father, to be President of the USA is one of the most important milestones in our history. Yet I wonder if younger people, for whom the extreme racism of the past is not something they have lived through, and who see African-Americans everywhere in the media and filling all sorts of roles in society, don’t in truth underestimate how dramatic a change it represents from even the time when Obama came into this world.

President-Elect (I need say for a few more hours) Obama was born in 1961. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed while Obama was a young child and had little direct effect on his early life, since he didn’t live in the South or even in the USA for part of that time. Some have maintained that by being the son of a Kenyan and a White American woman and by spending four of his early years in Indonesia, Obama has led a life quite different from and easier than that of many African-Americans born of the descendants of slaves and growing up in the South or in the ghetto; say, for example, that of Condoleeza Rice, who grew up in Birmingham and was friends with one of the little girls killed in the infamous church bombing of 1963. That may be true, but it is also completely beside the point as regards the significance of Obama’s election.

To the millions of White people trapped in the racist belief system that largely defined and thoroughly deformed the South (and which seeped into the rest of the country, in a somewhat diluted, mostly unofficial, form, as well) at the time when Obama was born, such a man with such features was not one to be let into one’s own house as a social equal, never mind the White House as one’s President. And let us not forget that the Supreme Court decision outlawing segregated schools in 1954 involved the Topeka, Kansas (home State of Obama’s mother) school system; even de jure segregation was not restricted to the South. That wasn’t long ago!

No one alive today remembers slavery, which had, let us recall, been abolished for less than a hundred years at the time of Obama’s birth. We can read about slavery in the USA—I recommend Genovese’s Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made for a thorough description of life under slavery and an analysis of how the oppressive system was maintained—and try to imagine what it must have been like, but imagining is not living. Thanks be to God, we have neither felt not inflicted the lashes of the whip, nor lived, as Lincoln did, knowing that whippings and worse were being carried out in our country, with the sanction of the law, on men and women viewed as outright property to be bought and sold.

As those who lived during slavery days have all passed away, so have more and more of us who grew up in the days when Slavery’s unrepentant ghost ruled in the South, during the so-called Jim Crow era, in which separation (and of course inequality) of the races was cruelly enforced by the State. I came to manhood as a White person in Texas during that time and under that system. Though I have no doubt that the system as it existed in Alabama and Mississippi was even more oppressive than the one in Texas, except perhaps in some parts of East Texas, the Texas one was bad enough, unspeakably bad in fact. Yet, anything one is born into seems “normal” at first, and it is only over time that both the injustice and illogic of everyday life can come to be recognized.

I’m sure I’ll have more to say about my own experience and the development of my views and feelings later, but for now I will just make one point. It was the courageous Black demonstrators such as the students who engaged in the lunch counter sit-ins in 1960, that made it inescapably obvious to me that the wrongs of this system were keenly felt by those it oppressed, and that it had to be ended. It’s one thing to recognize an evil abstractly and another to have it firmly grab you by the collar to demonstrate how painfully unbearable it is for those suffering its most direct effects.

Eventually the Civil Rights Movement had the whole country by the collar. President Lyndon Johnson got the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through Congress because its time had come, as shown by the thousands of Civil Rights demonstrators clearly willing to die for the Cause, and not because he was out in front of the country on the issue. Yet, he was out in front of his fellow White Southerners, and I’m glad it was a President from Texas who played an important role in abolishing all the trappings of Jim Crow.

Even the recognition that the system must be ended as soon as possible was not enough to bring a full realization of just how bad it was to live on the oppressed side of the color line. I remember how in 1964 or 1965, my wife and I, both students at the University of Texas, had occasion, through work in a political campaign trying to elect the first Black man to the Austin City Council, to get to know a few people from the other side of the racial divide in a way that allowed us to speak freely.

During a conversation with one of the Black campaign workers, a man named Ed, who was a few years older than I, we learned more about what the thoughts had been of those suffering directly from the racial oppression. Although it shouldn’t have been, it was shocking to hear Ed matter-of-factly talk of the intense hatred he and his high school mates had felt toward Whites. They had fantasized about the most effective way to kill a large number of us at one time. An attack from the air on a crowd at the University of Texas football stadium had been deemed most promising, as there would have been tens of thousands of Whites in a concentrated mass, with no Black fans in the stands and no Black players on the field. No Black players—can anyone who wasn’t alive then imagine that? How common were such fantasies of mass killings? I imagine they were common.

Racial prejudice went far beyond wanting social separation of the races for a lot of people, for the Jim Crow segregation system served not only to limit social contact between the races (especially between Black men and White women, it should be noted), but also to stigmatize Black people as inferior and, beyond that, as irremediably unclean in a way that could contaminate Whites who made physical contact with them.

I can remember, as a young child, having some adult (not sure who, but not my mother or either of her parents, I’m sure) telling me not to put money in my mouth because “some nigger” might have handled it. The point of this was to convince me I shouldn’t put coins in my mouth, not to  promote the idea that Black people were especially unclean, which was assumed in the admonition; but of course this is the way such notions are transmitted to a young child. I don’t remember accepting that idea fully, as it didn’t really make sense, but I’m sure its prevalence had an effect on my early view of things.

Consider the maintenance and enforcement of separate drinking fountains for the two races. From where we now stand, separate drinking fountains for the races might seem an inconvenience and an indignity, one more way to make a point of the second class status of Black people, yet not that significant compared to impediments to voting, gross inequality in education, and subservience enforced by violence. The race-specific fountains were found only in places where the races were bound to be intermingled to some extent: court houses, train stations, department stores, etc. There was no need for a dual-fountain system in the schools, which were already single-race institutions. But it would be wrong to minimize the effect of segregated water fountains. The segregation of water fountains showed how deeply irrational the ugly ideology of racism was, and at the same time served to reinforce and perpetuate that ideology.

If Barack Obama and his mother had come to my home State when he was two years old, one can imagine the stares or worse that this White woman with an obviously mixed-race child would have received. What if her little boy had been thirsty? Which public drinking fountain should little Barack’s mother have held him up to? White for her race or Colored for his? The segregation of water fountains was based on the way you looked. Two-year-old Barack Obama, future President of the United States, would have been judged Colored and thus too contaminated with Blackness to drink from the White fountain.

Back then, a White person conscious of the injustice of the system, might still, while maintaining hope for reform towards greater equality within the confines of segregation, make the case that separation of the races was something that each race really wanted and that having schools and other facilities that were separate but equally funded, say, was a morally acceptable solution to the problem of racial differences and antagonisms. And in fact some people did hold such views. One could work for more funding for the Black schools, at the risk of being called a “nigger lover” of course, without overturning the whole system of segregation.

But what about those separate water fountains? They betray the diabolical worm in the rotten heart of the Jim Crow system, exposing the depth of irrationality, fear, and superstition that was inherent in the ideology of White supremacy: that the Black race was considered, not just different, not just inferior even, but unclean in the way that lepers were in the Old Testament and that the caste of Untouchables still is in some rural areas of India.

So even if the schools had been made “equal” and the streets in the Black neighborhoods paved (as so many weren’t), those segregated fountains would have remained to proclaim that one race was considered unclean, which in practice of course served to justify the denial of equality of resources and living conditions to people of that race. And every Black person that drank from the Colored fountain had to do it knowing there was more to it than mere social separation of the races involved. Every White person had the idea of possible contamination through interracial contact reinforced or first suggested by those signs designating race above the fountains.

As an aside, I might add that President-Elect Obama’s mixed-race parentage does more to demolish the myth of racial contamination than the election of a “completely Black” person to the Presidency would have. Obama’s election likely causes Nazi Klansman David Duke even more consternation than Jesse Jackson’s would have.

Laws can change attitudes. We have seen it. Some false ideas can’t survive long without the oxygen supplied by State support. Can laws change hearts? Yes, over time certain laws can—by changing behavior in a way that nullifies fear. When those artificial, State-enforced barriers were removed, the exaggerated ideas of difference and status they engendered and maintained began to weaken and fade. This was partly due to the older, more inveterate racists dying off and being replaced by a younger generation not subjected to the constant subtle propaganda on the dangers of racial contamination. But I feel sure that some people felt their own irrational fears subside. Remove the separate fountains and you remove the constant message that one group of people is to be shunned as unclean. You drink from the same fountain, even swim in the same pool, and nothing bad happens. Life goes on.

I think I am pretty well immune to political enthusiasm (being overly cynical or negative some might say); so the election of Senator Obama was not something that elated me from the standpoint of partisan victory, expectation of sweeping positive change, etc. the way it did so many I know. Nonetheless, I have had a feeling of deep satisfaction in Obama’s election from the standpoint of its freeing us from the past, and I have even felt joy in the contemplation and experience of how much this election has meant to so many, especially those who remember from personal experience the days they were deemed unfit even to drink from the same fountain as White people. Now I feel myself being drawn to unrestrained celebration when the actual inauguration takes place.

President Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, could not have foreseen that an African-American would ever come to fill the very office he held. Yet Barack Obama is about to be sworn in as President with his hand on the Lincoln Bible. Let the waters of reconciliation flow forth from the rock of our nation’s foundation! Let us all drink from that one fountain!