To make a long story short: newspaper editors were conserving space in print.
Several teams in the late 1800s called themselves the “Red Stockings,” including one from Boston. That name was too long for headline columns and box scores — a newspaper is only so wide — so it often became “Red Sox.”
The original Boston Red Stockings got their name (and their best players) from an out-of-town team that had gone belly-up. Today’s Red Sox, some 126 years ago, pilfered that name from their own backyard.
When the Cincinnati Red Stockings became the first baseball team to pay players in 1869, teams didn’t typically have nicknames. They often went by the city name: Boston, or the “Bostons.”
The Boston baseball team established in 1871 – today the Atlanta Braves – was called the Red Stockings by the press for two reasons: That’s what they wore, and because they had three future Hall of Famers (the Wright Brothers, George and Harry, and Al Spalding) from the aforementioned Cincinnati team.
The Red Stockings won four pennants in their first five years, and 10 in their first 31. They were often called the “Reds” (not “Red Caps,” a name given retroactively). Once the American League was formed, they became the Nationals.
In 1901, Boston’s charter AL team moved into the new Huntington Ave. Grounds, across the railyard from the South End Grounds where the NL team played. They paid brash third baseman Jimmy Collins and three other standouts to defect, traded for Cy Young, and won the first World Series in 1903 as the Americans.
The Nationals dropped a new look in 1907, ditching their trademark red socks for white ones at home and gray on the road (where they became the first baseball team to wear pinstripes, Yankees be damned). Americans president John I. Taylor saw a marketing opportunity.
In December 1907, he told Globe baseball writer Tim Murnane that his club, which debuted in blue stockings, were changing to red. Taylor also planned to officially name his team the “Red Sox” — simply to have some trade mark that would be easy to write and have a baseball flavor,” Murnane later wrote.
The Red Sox won five of the first 15 World Series before their 86-year drought. The Nationals, as the Braves, won two titles (1914 and 1948) before moving to Milwaukee in 1952.
Team president Charles F. Adams held a contest to name his fledgling NHL entry, for which he paid a fee of $15,000. It’s unclear if the person who suggested the winning idea received anything. Hopefully she got a Cup ring later.
Adams sought a mascot that was “an untamed animal … synonymous with size, strength, agility, ferocity and cunning,” per Globe reports.
Oh, and it had to be brown, to match Adams’ Brookside grocery stores, which were trimmed in brown and gold. “Browns” was one of dozens of suggested names, but it was nixed because calling them the “Brownies” would be seen as childish.
According to the Sports Museum, it was Bessie Moss, the secretary for coach and general manager Art Ross, who suggested “Bruins.” It is a word of Dutch origin that appeared in a late Middle Ages children’s fable, and was a term commonly used for brown bears at the time (including in the sports pages when referring to Brown University).
The Bruins’ brown uniforms didn’t last long. In November 1935, they ditched ‘em for the familiar black and gold they wear today – “daring, radical haberdashery,” as the Globe called it.
The Celtics — pronounced “Sel-tics,” not “Kel-tics” — were here decades before Boston Garden president Walter A. Brown landed an NBA team.
It was the name of Boston-area semi-pro soccer and amateur basketball teams in the 1920s. It was a local pro soccer outfit in the 1930s, inspired by the famed Celtic F.C. of Glasgow, Scotland.
It was also the name of a New York basketball club, the Original Celtics, that barnstormed here in the 1920s. One of their players was John “Honey” Russell, who in 1946 left his post at Manhattan College to accept Brown’s offer to coach.
Brown was crowing that local fans would soon be choosing hoops over hockey. He also said the team was looking for a nickname, and that “Boston Yankees” was under consideration (but not for long).
Inspiration struck Brown while having a conversation with team publicist Howie McHugh. The first three names that came to their minds were Whirlwinds (local team from the 1920s), Unicorns (Brown was president of the Boston Athletic Association, which had a unicorn logo) and Olympics (a successful hockey team Brown coached).
Brown blurted out: “Wait – I’ve got it – the Celtics. We’ll call them the Boston Celtics. It’s got great carryover tradition from the Original Celtics who played in New York. Boston is full of Irishmen. We’ll put our players in green uniforms.”
New England Patriots (1960)
After weeks of polling supporters, and uncovering such suggestions as Colonials, Pilgrims, Puritans, Braves, Beantowners and Hubs, owner Billy Sullivan named his new American Football League squad the Boston Patriots.
Newspaper folks had fun with the Revolutionary War theme, conjuring a team of drum-and-fife players marching up and down the sideline, and running a punny headline that referred to the team’s yet-to-be-determined home: “Oneth Get Name, Twoeth Buy Land.”
“Undoubtedly, the Patriots will become known as the Pats in the headlines for brevity’s sake,” the Globe’s Bob Holbrook wrote. “Some wise guy will refer to them as the Patsies.” Many did, actually, for much of their early history.
They became the New England Patriots in 1971, when Sullivan moved the team to Foxborough.
New England Revolution (1996)
Not hard to figure this one out: it’s a play on Boston’s patriotic history (and the above football team, also owned by Robert Kraft, that shared the same stadium). The Globe co-sponsored a naming contest.
Harvard University Crimson (1858) — At a regatta on Boston Harbor that spring, someone had the bright idea to give each college a distinct color. Harvard wore crimson handkerchiefs that day. Because dye was hard to come by, the color became magenta in the subsequent decades — the school newspaper was even renamed the Magenta. Students voted to make crimson the official school color in 1875. The sports teams soon adopted the moniker.
Boston College Eagles (1920) — BC didn’t have a mascot until an alum, Rev. Ed McLaughlin, wrote to the school newspaper, The Heights, to suggest “the Eagle, symbolic of majesty, power and freedom,” whose natural habitat was in the high places.
Boston University Terriers (1922) — A student vote was held to adopt the Boston Terrier as the school mascot. It was the only animal, the BU News wrote in May 1922, “distinctive of Boston and of Boston alone” … and while small, characterized by the “courage and determination” of the bulldog, and the “speed, zip, aggressiveness and enterprise” of the terrier breed, “and above all, loyalty.”
Northeastern University Huskies (1927) – The nation was reading dispatches from the Alaskan frontier, where explorers and their sled dogs were delivering diphtheria vaccines across the uncharted territory. NU was looking for a mascot. One of the top Alaskan mushers, Leonhard Seppala, brought to Huntington Ave. a husky named Sapsut, whose father had been on his Alaskan team.
Boston Renegades (2015) — The name traces their lineage to their Women’s Football Alliance predecessor, the Boston Militia, and several other defunct clubs with tough-sounding names.
New England Free Jacks (2018) — The Quincy-based Major League Rugby squad takes its name from those who escaped the UK’s Union Jack during the Revolutionary War.
Boston Fleet (2024) — The Professional Women’s Hockey League team, which plays in Lowell, chose its name to honor “the unified spirit of our people, players and fans, who move together with speed, strength and a relentless might” to further Boston’s seafaring tradition.
BOS Nation FC (2024) — They wanted to put the “boss” back in Boston, but their initial attempt was deflating.
Matt Porter can be reached at matthew.porter@globe.com. Follow him @mattyports.