LogFAQs > #913548597

"Earlier in the year, counsel at the Oak View Group (which is interlinked with the Seattle ownership group and is overseeing the KeyArena renovations) applied for 38 domains representing 13 potential team names:

Seattle Cougars
Seattle Eagles
Seattle Emeralds
Seattle Evergreens
Seattle Firebirds
Seattle Kraken
Seattle Rainiers
Seattle Renegades
Seattle Sea Lions
Seattle Seals
Seattle Sockeyes
Seattle Totems
Seattle Whales"

Alright some of these are great and some of these are terrible. Let's go through them.

13. Seattle Cougars

The Washington State Cougars have a complete monopoly on this name everywhere in the entire state, and any team copying its name would be completely unable to escape its shadow, and that's just not an association you want to begin with. Plus it's a terrible name for a hockey team anyway. This is completely unacceptable.

12. Seattle Renegades

What is this, an arena football team? Fuck off.

11. Seattle Eagles

There's already hundreds of high school and college teams, as well as an NFL team, named the Eagles all over the country. This name is boring and has no identity and no connection to the city.

10. Seattle Rainiers

This would be a lovely name if not for the fact that the Tacoma Rainiers, a PCL (AAA) baseball team, already exist and are quite well known to sports fans in the region. Completely unviable and that it ranks this high is a testament to how bad the names below this are.

9. Seattle Totems

I don't want to do this. I don't think this name is racist, but it seems like really not the right time to introduce this name back into the conversation. I don't want this to be a point of discussion so let's just avoid it. There used to be a Seattle Totems that played in this city for a few decades from the 40's to 70's and let's just leave them to be of that era and not resurrect the name. Bonus reason I don't like the name - while we do have totem poles here in Washington I actually associate them more with British Columbia, which is a problem because they also have a hockey team.

8. Seattle Whales

Speaking of association with British Columbia, not only do the Canucks have an orca theme going on already, but this would also be unable to escape association with the Hartford Whalers, even though a whaler and a whale are kind of opposite things. I love me some whales but this name fails to establish itself.

7. Seattle Evergreens

Well at least it's not completely unfeasible like everything ranked below it on this list but it's painfully boring. It would probably just get shortened to "Greens" which I guess is okay. I don't think you could really make a fir tree into a really awesome logo and it would only make me think of Stanford anyway. I'll pass.