El Paso Chihuahuas

30

It's always interesting to read the details of a "Name the Team" contest. I mean, we all know that they're bullshit intended to create publicity and that the votes rarely if ever actually determine the name the team is going to go with, but seeing what the rejected names were is usually a decent insight into the thought process the team went through.

And so it is with the El Paso Chihuahuas. The other names in the contest were Aardvarks, Buckaroos, Desert Gators, and Sun Dogs. A few things immediately leap out to me:

• Most of these are bad names. Aardvarks are neither intimidating nor local to the El Paso area (they're native to central and southern Africa). Buckaroo is a word that probably hasn't been used unironically in the Third Millennium. Desert Gator is a made-up name, and it shows. Sun Dogs isn't a made-up name, but still sounds like one. Clearly they were trying to come up with names that were bad enough that it would be plausible for them to lose out to Chihuahuas.

• The names are heavily stacked toward the beginning of the alphabet. I'm not sure why. I do know that many years ago I was helping someone name a new company he was starting, and one thing that was important to him was that the name come early in the alphabet so that people who were skimming through the yellow pages would find it. Of course, no one uses the yellow pages for anything anymore, and it's not like El Paso has a bunch of baseball teams such that this one needs to stand out from all the others. I'm not sure what the significance of this is (if indeed there is any), but it leapt out at me nonetheless.

• I will at least grudgingly concede that the names are creative in the sense that they're not overused the way team names like Stars and Tiger are. Of course, the obvious counterargument is that there's a reason certain names are used more than others. Anyway, I found no instances of Aardvarks or Desert Gators, three instances of Buckaroos (two of which folded over a century ago, while the third folded in 1974), and two instances of Sundogs (although not Sun Dogs), both of them actually dating from this century.

• Despite all of the above, you could still make a decent argument that they chose the worst of the bunch. I personally would put it in fourth out of the five (beating only Buckaroos), but since that name has actually been used a few times it must be a little better than I'm giving it credit for.

Final Score: 30 points.
Penalties: Humanoid, 30 pts. Bonuses: None.