Sports Teams Get 'Rock Band' Nicknames

June 9, 2004 -- -- Hockey is a game of speed, body checking and tough-guy enforcers, so what would fans think of a team called the Peoria Prancers?

"People would laugh," remembers Bart Rogers, current president and general manager of Peoria, Ill.'s minor league hockey team team, which bore the unfortunate name in the early 1980s.

"[Opposing] fans that would come in would do a kind of prancing," he says. "[The name] just didn't show toughness."

A newspaper contest renamed the team the Peoria Rivermen after two seasons, and the players, coaches and fans could start rebuilding their shaken egos.

After all, a team's name, its logo and its uniform help shape a team's or league's image, sell T-shirts and hats, and draw and keep fans.

These days, many teams consult with marketing, image and apparel companies to get just the right image, and the process could be one reason why, in the modern era, prevailing styles of team names are changing.

"With new leagues and new teams, I don't see a lot of teams naming themselves Lions and Tigers and Bears," says Trey Fitz-Gerald, a spokesman for Major League Soccer, a decade-old league with team names like Chicago Fire, Columbus Crew, New England Revolution and Dallas Burn.

"A shocking logo or an irreverent name [can be] something that makes people take a second look or ask a question" about a team seeking media exposure, he adds.

Newer leagues like Major League Soccer often choose collective names (Charge, Storm) or names of uncountable forces (Heat, Thunder), rather than more traditional plural names. Six of the soccer league's 10 team names don't have the traditional "s" at the end.

The same pattern holds for the brand new National Pro Fastpitch women's softball league that debuted last week, when the New England Riptide faced the New York/New Jersey Juggernaut on June 1.