Team Names – How?
 

Hey, just kind of a question to all of the teams out there: How did you decide on your team names (and/or robot names)? Are they school mascots? allusions to literature or culture? Not really an important question, just trying to understand the rest of you out there, lol.

To answer my question, we have had two team names. Last year it was "The Titans." We spent (surprisingly) about a week on our name, finally deciding on something that sounded strong (Titans were figures in Greek mythology who were predecessors of the Olympian Gods, i.e. Mercury, Venus, etc.). Also, our robot's name was Vulcan (the Greek name for the Roman god Hephaestus, god of forges who pretty much created the first robots).

This year, since we wanted to change not only our appearance but be memorable (there were about 4 teams with the name "The Titans" last year), we decided in only about 2 or 3 days. We voted and came out with "The Apes of Wrath." Since our teacher is an English teacher and since we are from California, we thought it fitting to make some reference to Californian literature (John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath). Also, our robot's name this year is "Furious George," named after everyone's favorite childhood primate, Curious George.

So, if you feel like sharing, please tell the story of YOUR team or robot's name (and, if you would, respond to our team name, I would like some feedback).

Our team was at first to be called Gilmores Geeks in recognition of a since moved vice principal who is admired by the nerd community in my school.

But it was changed to Kinetic Knights our school mascot is the Knight so it works. Only problem is our town name is Kincardine (Kincardine Kinetic Knights could perhaps be seen as wrong in acronym form)

Our robot name hasnt been decided, its however narrowed down to Sharlene or Ghost Dog

Sharlene is from Full Metal Jacket, Private Pile named his rifle sharlene

Ghost Dog is the name of a really horrible movie that alot of the people on our team saw and laughed ALOT at. That and it sounds like a great name right off the bat, where Sharlene would be harder for some people to instantly associate.

Well, The Mechanical Bulls (810) came about because the Bull is Smithtown's mascot. There's also a mural someone had done a few years ago of a bull that was made of like metal and stuff. One of the ideas that was outvoted was the Mechanibulls. Let me tell you how grateful I am that that lost. :)

As far as 417 goes though (since I feel I ought to mention them as well) I know last year they were Stangbot and I know their mascot is the mustang. Since I only became part of their team yesterday, I'm afraid that I don't know too much about them. But, I am assuming they also based their name off their school mascot.

Well, I'm tapped for information :)

~Christina

My team has had two names... The Lions, and The Sea Dawgs. We were the Lincoln Lions because our school mascot is a lion. When we were the Lions our robots names were "Robox" (it was a plywood box), and "Alion" (Al = Aluminum and lion for the lions.. it was funny at the time). We came up with The Sea Dawgs because we were frustrated with the lack of support we were getting from our school. Since they didn't want to either give us money, give us space to work, or promote our team in any way we decided to try to cut them out of our name. We wanted to have a pirate theme. So we looked up the word 'pirate' in a thesauras and found sea dog. We changed the spelling a little and the rest is history.

Team 122 are the "original" NASA Knights. I've heard of there being one or two other NASA Knights around, but don't know what their team numbers are.

~Tom Fairchild~, who's proud to be a Knight! :D

For us, our team name always stayed "Woburn Robotics", but each year we had a different "theme" by which our robot and public image would be modelled after. In 1998 it was Chaos, 1999-Fury (some of u guys might remember the shorts with "FURY" printed across the rear), and 2000-Blizzard. However, once we got to Blizzard we decided to stick with it.

Go posting during school!! heh ;)
Anyway, MOE is an accronym for Miracle of Engineering. Yeah, its cheesy, but with DuPont being our major sponsor, and thier slogan being "Miracles of Science," this was a logical continuation. And we being literary and rhetorical gods :rolleyes: our chant, as most of you know, includes the phrase 'go moe' - wow -
see? it rhymes! isnt that just great?....

Pontiac Central High School Chiefs

Sponsor: Delphi Automotive Systems


Chief Delphi.

You have that backwards. Vulcan was the Roman name and Hephaestus was the Greek name.

Matt

TechnoKats

Techno, from technology
Kats, from the school mascot, Wildkats


Kats is spelled wrong to go with Kokomo. I don't really like the deliberate misspelling, but it has been Wildkats for a hundred years, so I'm not going to change it.

In my opinion it is pretty important to find a good team name and stick with it. Its also a good idea to have the same name for your robot and your team, or something close so people recognize the robot and relate it to the team. Whatever you do though, try not to change the team name from year to year (unless you have something to hide or you want others to forget). Very few people realize that our team (Rhode Warrior) was the producer of the legendary Aquatread. They changed the team name for no reason really and so we are not attatched to that legend anymore except with the old FIRST veterens who figured it out.
And good teams names always come from something distinctive and meaningful. Something that represents your school or your location and adds a little something to it.


Becky

the two high schools represented by our team are South Fork High School and Martin County High School, so someone recommended:

S.A.M. = South Fork And Martin County

then someone mentioned that our sponsor Pratt & Whitney wasn't included... thus S.P.A.M. was born:

S.P.A.M. = South Fork, Pratt & Whitney, And Martin County

by the way... i LOVE your name... Apes of Wrath... lol... so many possiblilities with that one =-]

George
S.P.A.M. Team 180

Last year was our rookie year so we decided to keep our name fairly simple. Every team in our school has the name "The Friars". So we decided to modify it to "Steel Friars" to put emphasis on the robot itself. Since our school is a catholic school (1st catholic school on long island to compete I believe) and many of the teaches and staff are Fransiscan Brothers, we came up with the name Robo-Bro for the bot itself. Although we constantly used the nickname of "Boomer" because we figured it would explode the first time we powered up at the competition.
This year we kept the team name but decided to change our robot name. We took "Boomer" our nickname from last year and made it the real name. And with all these new motors and the importance of powerful drive trains, it seems all the more fitting.

I agree with the person from the Rhode Warriors, about having a good name and keeping it, so this year team 151 finally got around to establishing a name. The student body elected to become The Wildcards. Pretty much because a joker is a really cool logo.


Chris
151

Well, with team 308, we're Walled Lake schools and TRW. Trying to make a play off the Lockness monster, one of our engineers came up with the Walled Lake Monster. Don't ask where Robostars came from... I don't remember

121 is actually the Islanders (we live on an island, every sport team uses it), but with a lot of teams, the robot name is what sticks. So, we are commonly refered to as the Rhode Warriors. I can think of a few other teams this applies to as well.

I guess as long as a crowd remembers your name, it really doesn't matter.

Our team (#201) is called the FEDS. Our original sponsor was EDS, so we took the F from Falcons (our school mascot) and put EDS at the end.

When we lost EDS and picked up Visteon as our sponsor, we now had a name derived from a former sponsor that we didn't particularly like at that point. The name, however, was what we were known as, so we developed a clever acronym for FEDS:

Falcon Engineering and Design Solutions

So there you have it, the clever backronym for our team name.

As for our robot, only one of them, our 2001 robot, has a name. It was called Tippy in honor of its apparent lack of balance when on the floor (not on the bridge, it was fine there :D).

Sorry....
 

Matt, thanks for the correction. I was a bit out of it when I wrote this thread (always am), and I will make sure I don't do it in the future.

My team is called the "Cheesy Poofs" from South Park. It was chosen when South Park first came out, and we've stuck with it. Like SharkBite said, it is important to stick with the team name you have so people recognize your team from year to year.

Ours was hard!
 

Originally, I asked the high school students to come up with something. They came up with Eagles and Fantasia. Ech!

So I sat down one day in the Physics Club room at umass and started thinking of names they could vote on. One of them was Rambots. I came up with this name when I saw the Rambo poster on the wall :).

I also came up with other cool names that got voted down :(:

Robot Dinero
Botman and Robit
FemBots
etc..

-anton

Taylor Career Technical Center aNd Taylor Truman/Kennedy H.S. schools

Team T.N.T. 280
Taylor, Michigan

Last years Bot was named "MOOSE" because it looked like a moose with it's grippers in the upright position (hey it was 3 am the night before ship date and I had the label maker out...the rest is history)

No name as of yet for this years Beast.... Beast ...hmmmmm...well maybe? nah... too soon to tell

you know, i was there at the meeting where our team and robot names were decided... and i still have no idea where they came from. and come to think of it, it had to indirectly have come from me, since brits don't know about sporks. but now we're S.P.O.R.K. = Secret Phrases Only Roboticians Know. or something like that. with our bot 'ginger ninja'. that rhymes. really.

-ankur

Our Team name is the N.E.W. Apple Corps... and we got our name because we are based in Appleton Wisconsin, hence Apple ... and then N.E.W stands for North, East, West which are the three highschools involved in the Appleton Public School District. We also have some members from Xavier, which is a private school we just havent found a good way to incorporate them into our name yet. And our Robot name is Tobor, which is robot backwards. I'm not sure how that was come up with, maybe someone else from my team could answer that all I know is all of our robots have been named Tobor. Tobor I, Tobor II, Tobor III, Tobor IV and this year we're working on Tobor V.

Thanks
 

The response to this thread has been great! I love learning about how all of your team names came about (I especially like the N.E.W. Apple Corps, it's very punny).

Keep it up! (and, just as a quick question, what do YOU think of OUR name?)

Nonnebots
Team 38

Much irony here. Our team was born in 1997-98 (details on our creation can be found in the "creation myth" on our website, http://home.earthlink.net/~nonnebots/about.html). As students from Nonnewaug High School, Nonne was a given, and what did we build? a roBot. Hence Nonnebots. Spanning the first two years, we were sponsored by a local engineering firm, and recieved a bit of cash from Nonnewaug. However, in our third and fourth year Nonnewaug cut off all funding and support towards our team, leaving us with just the engineering group. For these 2 years, we had no affiliation with the school whatsoever. (during the past 6 years, our school has changed administration [principle, vice principle, superintendant] 3 or 4 times, resulting in widespread instability in budget and spending). Yet at the demand of one of our parent volunteers, our team remained "Nonnebots." (despite widespread, virtually 100% disagreement from students). Anyway, present year rolls around, and over the past summer, due to reasons far beyond our control, our sponsor could no longer support us, leaving our entire team sponsor and moneyless. Nonnewaug decided to throw us a bone and give us a small bit of cash. Not much, barely enough to register a regional, but we became an official "school club" once again. And so presently, Nonnebots. But still much to the protest of the student members.

The Baxter Bomb Squad name comes from the Mountain Home High School mascot - Bombers. The school was built just after WWII when it was a good thing to be a "bomber". It is the only school in the US with that team name.

We have thought about if our name is still appropriate and have even talked to FIRST about it. Their thoughts were that a Bomb Squad is made up of "good guys" so it's ok.

We have always been very sensitive about our shirts and this year our team decided not to wear them outside the FIRST venues.

Robonauts - Ho!!!!
 

Team #118 out of Houston is the Robonauts, because most of the team's engineers (myself included) work at NASA on a project called (you guessed it) Robonaut.

Check him out here - http://vesuvius.jsc.nasa.gov/er_er/h.../robonaut.html

The team's robot last year was called Condor because it looked rather birdlike after it was built, due to the 15' telescoping ball grabber arms, and the shorter pointed goal arm in the front. The previous year (before my time, but I'll share the legend) the robot was called "Hot Rod" because whenever it moved, it popped a wheelie. 118 tends to wait until the robot has started to take shape before they determine a name.

Furious George
 

Oh yeah - I almost forgot:

Furious George was the name of Mr. Burn's knife-fighting monkey on the Simpsons.

There was an episode where Homer was left in charge of Burn's house, and took his yacht to international waters, where they, among other things, staged a monkey knife fight. When Burns came home to see his monkey bandaged up, he exclaimed, "Furious George! What happened to your beautiful face?"


And now you know the rest of the story.

401 The Hokie GUARD
 

Our first year we were the Blacksburg Power Surge (big suprise that one didn't stick, but technically we weren't allowed to use the name "Blacksburg High School" since that year we had no official school support. Since our team is now more established and has more support, we're The Hokie GUARD
Hokie, from the mascot of Virginia Tech, where most of the team mentors are from, GUARD being both a regiment of soldiers, and an accronym, as inspired by the HOT team (heros of tomorrow). We're still debating to keep the accronym or just leave it as guard with no other meaning, but if we keep the accronym, its
GUARD - Gladiators of Uniquely Accelerated Robot Development

rhode warrior
 

we live in Rhode Island. hence the RHODE part and warrior is just cool so our robot is the RHODE WARRIOR (and we just add a # after it eachyear).

Furious George!
 

Lol, my younger brother said the exact same thing when I said that. Since we are HUGE Simpsons fans, I think that knew it subconsciously, but it still seemed apropos because we have an English teacher as a mentor (strange, huh?).

TOBOR!!
 

Yea, I believe the second year (TOBOR I) one of our students was just messing around and said "Hey! We sould call it TOBOR! That's 'ROBOT' spelled backwards!" (Duh!) Every year after that we've kept the name and added a roman numeral... The first year our team was formed, we were at a different Appleton HS and the robot's name from that year is unkown. So yea! :)

That's my story 'n I'm sticking to it!

Lets see.....how did we come up with our name again? Our full name if Nortel Networks "The RAID". I know we were kicking names around and came up with that. RAID does stand for something... I'm going to go out on a limb and say RAID stands for Robotic Artificial Intelligent Development....

Yea, that should be right. And our robot name.... is "Gus". Though this year, it may be "Gus the 2nd". Not sure though.

For those of you using Bosch...(our team did last year)....we decided to call it "Gus" because we need all the gussets to put the bot together. And we also said if the robot was female, it would have been "Guset" :D

So far, I think no one else has copied ours...lol

Hey to everyone!
 

Hi, and thanks to all of those who have posted. But, since i've only gotten 33 replies (three of them my own), I know there are only about 30 of the teams that have responded of the hundreds out there. C'mon, get those fingers typing and explain why YOUR team name is unique!

Re: TOBOR!!
 

Hey Tobor Fans!

Did you know that there's been a movie made about your robot? Do you like adventure? Excitement? Romance? Crappy 1950's sci fi?

Then check out Tobor the Great

Now playing in the home of a collector of crappy 50's sci-fi videos near you!


:D

We're the Gear Grinders, but this is due to a 'contest' of sorts we held last year to decide on a new name, which replaced the unfortunate wrestling reference of the 'NRO', or the New Robot Order. So, moving past that, we came across the Gear Grinders, with our robot Boomer (Always has been Boomer, just 'cause)...I'm still of the opinion that a 'Gear Grinder' might not be the best name to give to a perfectly (hopefully) working machine...Sounds a bit like 'Motor Burners' or 'Traction losers' or the like.

-Tom

Beach 'Bots
 

Originally we were a combined team with 5 different high schools represented. Many of the students on that original team were from Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach. Though other cities with romantic names like Hawthorne were also represented. When they were picking the team name Beach 'Bots was suggested but not chosen. I think they were the South Bay Sparks or something like that. Another name of ill-omen.

The next year, for various reasons irrelevant to this discussion, Hope Academy and Hawthorne High decided to have their own teams. Since Hope Academy does not compete in any intermural sports EXCEPT robotics, we didn't have a school mascot to fall back on.

I was at the meeting where we chose the name Beach 'Bots. Somebody remembered the name from the previous year and it seemed appropriate. After all the school is located in Hermosa Beach. It was also non-violent and would offend no ethnic groups.

We weren't particularly successful in competition that year, but everybody seemed to like the name so we kept it the second year. That year we did fairly well in competition, we were in the semifinals at our regional, and placed in the top 10 % nationally.

Since we were starting to get a name, the third year we kept it again and I don't think anyone has even considered changing it since. I certainly don't remember it being voted on after the second year.

Officially our robot is just one of the team and goes by Beach 'Bot X.0 but some years it has a team nickname as well. I can remeber a couple of discussions about whether that year's robot was a "he" or a "she".

I think this year's is definitely a "he".

Our team got it's name 4 years ago by taking a combination of the East Islip High School regular sports team name: the EI Redmen. Coupled with the type of product our very first sponsor, AIL Systems manufactured: Radar Jamming Equipment.

Put it together and you have : The RedJammers!!

We have kept the team name as it has become sort of a tradition.

The robot's name changes every year. There are 4 elementary schools in the district and in the beginning of December the team holds a 'name the robot' contest. They visit each of the elementary schools with the previous years robot, performing demonstrations and promoting FIRST and the team. Then ballot boxes are left in the schools and retrieved a week later. One finalist from each elementary school is chosen and each of those students receives a team T-shirt (itself a major fashion statement of style and grace!)

Last year's robot was named EInstein (a capital EI for East Islip) Geez! I wish the team had a dollar for all of the "robby the robot" entries received.

This years name hasn't been announced yet. Soon though soon, when the time is right........

Actually our team name has a pretty good story behind it. Two years ago our team was formed when a number of students were dropped from the official school team under still questionable reason. However, the students refused to give up on FIRST and with the help of one parent in particular they found a sponsor and college to promote their team. As a result the name "Las Guerrillas" came naturally. Up until this year the two teams enjoyed comepeting against one another, but as the number of students on the official school team dwindled those on 469 continued to grow and the school team met a demise over summer of 2001. The truly ironic part is that just within the last couple of weeks our team has become the new official school team. I used to be on the former official school team, and I swear there was more drama between the two teams than in a soap opera but things worked out in the long run. Oh by the way last years FIRST bot was named Cornelius after the mean ape in "Planet of the Apes" and we named our 2001 CDI bot Kurchec after the biggest gorilla in "Tarzan" I think it was.

Good old Sparky
 

Well we are team 384. We just decided to make it easy and use our team number as our name. Humm us lazy Virginia people :). Our robot name is the same as last year. SPARKY 3.0 ! We should have a site up with pics of our FIRST COMPLEATED prototype! I will post when we have it up.

Jason

ahh behold a shower of sparks....o wait thats our robot trying to move!

Well, back to the days when we were the only team from Colorado, our team name was Colorado Robotics, but last year 2 rookie teams, one form Denver and one from Colorado Spring participated in the same regional as we were, and the Denver team registered as Colorado Robotics, so we changed our team name to Alpine Robotics, which I think we will stick with for a while.

As for our bot, the name changes every year, but last year we have officially come to a general consensus to name our robot CAM the RAMBot, because we want to draw our potential sponsor, Colorado State university, into supporting us financially as well. CAM stands for Colorado Academy of Mines, which is the old name for CSU and the Rams is their mascot. So far, they haven't promise anything yet, but they do allow us to work in a lab located in the engineering building, which is quite nice... However, we were surprised how many teams were named RAMBot as well, so we might change it to CAMBot this year.

I'd love to tell you a funny story about how we got our team's name(SigmaC@ts)...But I dont know. I've spent the last couple years trying to find out , and to my knowledge noone remembers or is willing to admit why we named it that. Our school Mascot is the Panther, which explains the cat(but not the @ symbol...) and sigma is a greek letter. There have been a few attempts by the students to change it, but we've had it so long it would seem sacrilege to change it. Let this be a lesson to all rookie teams, WRITE THIS STUFF DOWN!

Team 191 - Xerox-Joseph C Wilson Magnet HS - X-CATS

In the same line with some other teams we're almost kinda obvious.

X= XEROX Logo
CATS = Wilson WildCats (mascot)

Also side note - Wilson Magent HS was named after Joseph C. Wilson founding CEO of XEROX.

Thus our 11 year partnership tradition is linked by this historic fact.

Ellery

The RoboDAWGS (Team 288) were named by Mr. Dolloff in the 1999 season as something to put on our registration papers. Grandville's teams are the Bulldogs. The phonetic spelling mimics a lot of Grandville banners, T-shirts, etc. spelled this way. This is primarily athletic stuff, although the theater group calls themselves the Drama DAWGS as well. Anyway, it seems to have stuck, although some students have questioned the logic of it

After some initial logo attempts, Bob Mills, a senior on the team, came up with our rookie year logo for the T-shirts and robot. Great design, but complicated and expensive to reproduce. Us folks from Michigan melted with black shirts in the heat of Florida.

The 2000 team had one primary focus for uniforms and logo- a brighter color. Sophmore Brian DeVries came up with the angular Bulldog head used on literature and the shoulders of our shirts. The main color scheme and shirt design was inspired by a box at one of our Saturday design sessions.

The identity and recognition of our team has skyrocketed with the bright colors, the performance of the robots, the animation team, and of course, some excellent team members.

Since our teacher sponsor has a side job of raising cattle... he owns 40 head of them... we decided to name our robot "Beefeater" I still don't know why because cows don't eat themselves... and we neglected the fact that beefeater is also the name of a gin and a gentelmans magazine.....

we got our name after a long fight... I dont know WHO came up with it, but we're sticking to it!!

R.A.C.E.

Robotics And Creative Engineering

and our robot is RACER- just add Robot at the end

Our mascot is Speed Racer. GO SPEED RACER GO SPEED RACER GO SPEED RACER GOOOOOOO!

We had a long debate with all the members over what to rename Team 217 this year. There was a slight change in team sponsorship, so we are no longer Team Macomb. We welcomed all ideas and made it a rule not to criticize or blatantly reject any possible names. As with all teams we wanted a catchy name that would be embedded into the brains of other teams. Then one of our Ford engineers with a stroke of brilliance (we have to give them credit once in a while), suddenly came out with, how about the "ThunderChickens." We knew that was it then and there, a marketing division's dream. We're having tons of fun with the name already. Here's two examples: our Team Motto is: Engineering New Ways to Cross The Road." The robots name is "The Colonel", you can guess why. Look for the 217 ThunderChickens at the competition this year. We guarantee you won't forget us.

Wayne P
ThunderChickens CEO

Rockin' Robots

Thunder Chicken reminds me of a cartoon, late 60's called
Super Chicken it had a really catchy theme song.

http://www.toonopedia.com/suprchic.htm

"When you think your lifes in danger
When your threatned by a stranger
When you think you will get a lickin
BUC BUC BUC ....

Well you get it.

We haven't officially set on a name yet, there is an unofficial one.

Forrest Gumball

Well have fun.

TEAM !! 236 !!

TECHNO TICKS !!!

Team 568 is "Nerds of the North". The kids came up with the name last year (rookie year) when they had a meeting and looked at themselves. It was adopted by unanimous consent. It must come from some "North to Alaska" type expression (we are in Anchorage Alaska). In a reflection of the harsh environment the kids also came up with the motto "Adapt, migrate, or die".

The machine is called "Absolute Zero", hopfully a reflection more of the temp than the score!

Our robots name is always ADIDAR (All Day I Dream About Robots) thought up by a student in our academic sponsors Biology class. We are know as the Adidarons. When we were looking for the names of the teams some were very distasteful and this one has stuck, and kind of unique. Happy roboting KY :D

Rat Pack - 830
 

The rookie Rat Pack (Team 830, Huron High) derived its name from school's mascot, the River Rats. Huron High is located on the Huron River in Ann Arbor, MI.

Back around 1970 when the school first opened, they allowed the students to choose their own school mascot. They chose that one, much to the consternation of parents <chuckle>, because of the amount of Rodentia present around the river. At first, the parents howled and wanted it changed, but they SAID the students could choose it and were stuck with it! Besides, they were having WAY too much fun with it, so the parents backed off. It's now been around for 30 years and well accepted by the community. We have the Bat Rats (baseball team), Mat Rats (wrestling), etc.

Our team entered the CDI shortly after forming last fall. We had to have SOMETHING for the CDI contest's program, so we started throwing out names at a meeting. We knew we wanted to tie this fledgling program to the school so it students would identify with it and join. Then someone suggested "Rat Pack". It was definitely a head slapping "Yea, of COURSE" moment with everyone! <grin>

As for the robot, we WANTED to name it to be something apropos for the contest at hand. The CDI printing deadline was AFTER the contest was revealed. Our robot for the CDI contest was called "Pack Rat", as the problem was to collect OJ jugs and shuffle them around from shelf to shelf. Since running around randomizing objects' locations is exactly what a *real* Pack Rat DOES, it was definitely appropriate.

It's too bad that the FIRST printing lead times don't allow for us to name the robot after the contest is revealed! Since we didn't know what this contest was about yet when the program deadline came up, we just decided to keep the same name for this, our first FIRST contest.

But now we're finding we tend to tie a name too tightly to one robot. Although our FIRST machine will also be called Pack Rat, we're definitely using the name "Pack Rat" to refer specifically to our CDI contest machine (in fond memory, as it had to be torn down for recycling <sniff>). We're probably going to have to start thinking about annual robot names.

Any chance FIRST might ever set up a situation to allow us all to name our robots AFTER we find out about the problem?

BTW... One concept bantered about is in the future using famous "positive image" cartoon rat names for the individual robots, especially those that are popular enough to have stuffed animals made after them, so suggestions ARE appreciated to add to our list. An example might be Rizzo, from Henson Associates (Muppet fame), a Pokémon character, or the like. (Gee, we've found that for some reason it's HARD to find positive "rat" dolls! Stores don't seem to get into rats as much as they do the "cuddly" animals! <head scratch> ;-)

BTW... Do any of the teams ever dress or decorate themselves as some variant of their mascot for contests, or have their "furry suit" mascot come along to the Regionals?

- Keith
--
Keith McClary, Advisor, Huron High Rat Pack, Team 830

Re: Rat Pack - 830
 

Last year at Gret Lakes Regional, we had one of our college students dress up in our school mascot's suit. Since Rochester High School is the Falcons, we had a giant blue falcon wearing one of our team T-shirts. The Husky Brigade even gave us an award for the "Best Team Mascot"

Mascot/Furry Suits
 

Wait 'til you see what the ThunderChickens have planned. We'll definitely have members in Furry Suits with our Team shirt over them. The Mascots, are actually one of the most contended for positions on the team this year. It will be a blast. We will be at The Great Lakes Regional, Motorola Midwest Regional, and Nationals. Good luck with roboting.

Like so many others, our name is and Acronym. DART stands for De Anza Robotics Team.
Our first year we were just De Anza High School (in other words we were not very good at coming up with ideas). We changed it last year, and It's going to stay.
As for the name of our robots, they change every year, depending on what is on our minds when we choose it's title. Year One: Mr. Roboto (As in the Styx song that ROCKS!), Second year: BOB, which stood for "Be Our Buddies", and this year, Hampton, which was chosen after a LONG discussion about the Hamptser Dance Song...

Why not tell our story.....

Our team name is Gompei and the H.E.R.D. .... Gompei is the unofficial mascot of the school (technically, we're the "Engineers")... this is how the story goes..

"On a dark and stormy night in 1898, Gompei, the beloved goat mascot of WPI, was brutally beheaded. His head was bronzed in an act of immortalization; and it is there that his spirit has dwelled. Now, 104 years later, Gompei's spirit resides within the WPI/Mass Academy FIRST robot!

All goats go to heaven...
Except for Gompei. "

We call our robot Gompei usually.. but last year (and this year) we've added a twist my morphing him with another animal based on our robot abilities..

Last year it was the "Spidergoat" for our bar crawling legs.... this year it is the _____goat for our very cool ______ that you will all see at competition!!

Team 25 Raider Robotix


Our Name is dirived from the schools name the Raiders (which is a bird but really isn't) and robotix from the fact we are a robotics team but it looks cooler with the X at the end

Does anyone know why team 30 is called FURY?

(Im on the team, and still have no idea y):ahh:

team name
 

Our team name is Optimus Prime, for whatever the reason. Last year our robot name was V3.103 for some odd reason, don't ask me why. I've been trying to get the team name changed to APE (for Arrowhead & Price Engineering) but to no avail. No good stories here.

name
 

My old team was the Gila Monsters and that name was decided through many days of hard work. We first chose a number of names based on the fact that we were from Arizona and wanted something that would associate us to our state. So after many ideas we decided on the Gila Monsters due to the fact that our sponsor was General Motors so we though that the name was perfect and it has been.
I am now on a rookie team started by alumni from the Gila Monsters. Our team name is C.R.U.S.H. which stands for constructing robots under severe heat. The name was proposed and liked and that is our name now.

My mom came up with our team name. Take a look at the picture above my sig to find out what it stands for.

Our name came from a bunch of biology nuts. They tried DNA on us, which was basically rejected by everyone. There were a couple of other "bland" suggestions, but those didn't carry too well. Finally, we decided on NRG because it has some relevance to what we're doing and it stands for Newport Robotics Group. Although it would be nice if we could change it to Newport Robotics Association. Think of what that would do.

ehh... our team originally began as the LITTLES, which stood for the schools that were on the team... which are now three different teams - 84, 222, 284

team 84 became SWATT the first year which stood for the school that brandched of from the LITTLES, and the schools that joined up in that area

the third year of our existence we became WATTNESS, and have been ever since.
W - Waverly, NY
A - Athens, PA
T - Troy, PA
T - Towanda, PA
NE - NorhtEast Bradford, PA
SS - School Systems

our Robot's name was originally the Charminator the year of the LITTLES, because the sponsor was Charmin.

The name evolved into Chuck from the Chuck Taylor All Star shoes. For the first 4 years of team 84, Chuck changed slightly with numbers..... Chuck, ChuckR2, Chuck Pi, Chuck IV. However, the fifth year, the Robot became just Chuck, and it is referred to as Chuck by others....... (within our team, we still give them varying 'number' names to identify them; Chuck the 5th; Chuck N Moose.
...... hmmmm???? wonder what this years 'identification' name will become... only time will tell!

SPAM, Chimera, CircuitRunners
 

My senior year in High School (2001), a friend brought a superman outfit to nationals as a mascot for SPAM. A friend and I traded off wearing it, because it gets really hot after a while. It was alot of fun though, and might help you get a spirit award. We also had SPAM capes made for everyone.

George already did a good job of explaining how SPAM came about, so I won't bother with that. However, I am now at Georgia Tech and we sponsor 2 teams.

Team 832 is Chimera, which is some mythical animal that is part Lion, Snake, and Goat, I think. Not a school mascot, but it works.

Team 1002 is the CircuitRunners. I don't think they even know where it came from. Maybe one of them will post and let you know.

That's my info, happy bot building everyone!

Our name has an unusual story. I joined the team in our second year and have only heard the story. Apparantly during our rookie year a local bagel store donated trash bags full of bagels to our team and our teacher christened our team/robot "bagel bytes".:rolleyes:

My school, Harvard-Westlake, used to be two separate schools: Harvard School and Westlake School. Before they merged ten years ago, Harvard's mascot was the Saracen. When the two merged, the new mascot became the Wolverine. No one is particularly fond of the wolverine, so when we were choosing a name this year (it's our rookie year), we went back a decade and named ourselves The Saracens instead. Saracens are Muslim crusaders.

All Stars
 

Well, our team name is "All Stars" at first it was going to be "Stars" which meant as a joke... "Surviving Team members After Ramtech "(#59....our old team we were on) then we had just added the "all " in front of it....We have not decided on this years name for the bot.... but the name of last years bot (Rebecca) was chosen from a Walmart by one of our Engineers

Yeah Dan, Team Chimera was just a random idea from someone, but it really fit our robot well as we tried to do everything last year. This year you need to get them to do something about flying insects, because Tech is the Yellow Jackets and Roswell is the Hornets.

This year the team I"ve started is titled Lotus Robotics, but we had fun trying to think up names. There were a few acronyms people were coming up with, but none of them fit well, so I discouraged them. There were a few pirate ideas thrown around (alot of people wanted to find out what "pirate" is in russian and have that as our name) and a few just stupid names, but a few days earlier when I was conceiving ideas, I come up with the name Lotus Robotics. It"s clean and simple, but it has enough mystical implications that I thought it would fit well. When we finally got a list together to vote on, I added Lotus Robotics to the list and explained it by saying "it's a cool name" and no one really seemed interested, but when it came to the vote, it won nearly unanimously. It"s rather unique too, as I can"t think of any other teams with even a vaguely eastern theme, so look out for revolutionary marketing techniques at the Peachtree Regional.

name/bot
 

Well, since we ARE team 360, or 2PI in radians, it's the same as one revolution, so we are The Revolution (dang it's great to be a nerd, and its amazing that I learned more about Trig in robotics by our name and whatnot than I have in all my math classes!). Originally we were the Ranier Roboteers, since we're so close to Mt. Ranier, but we decided to change it for our 3rd year. So we are The Revolution.

And as for our robot, RainMaker, since we're from the Pacific Northwest, it seemed appropriate with the abundence of rain we get, and with all the reservations within the area, yeah, you get the point.

We have always been Team Hammond. Our robot name is The BEAST. BEAST stands for Beatty Engineered And Student Tweaked. It's an acronym that the students came up with 4(?) years ago, and it's stuck ever since.

Our rookie year we were the blazing tomahawks or something like that because our school mascot was the Indians. Well I guess we've had political-correctness pressure so we decided to change our name our second year and pick something more memorable. Not hard, our school's name was Hart...many things can come off of that.

So we were thinking pacemakers, hart attack, hart condition, etc, etc but the guys thought doing the whole medical thing overboard like we were envisioning was too hokey.

After much much debate and arguing we happily decided on Hartburn because the guys liked fire and it gave the spirit team a lot to go off of.

After several directionless meetings without a name, one team member stood up and yelled, "How about the Prank Monkeys?"

It's obviously so completely random that the kids loved it. It's actually a good name when it comes to promotion, etc.

Besides, it's a good rookie name - at least some people will remember us for it both on and off the field!

Amanda

p.s. - I forgot this. Our official motto is I.M.A.G.I.N.E.- Intelligent Minds And Great Innovations for a New Evolution.

Last year we didn't name our bot (didnt really think of it)...

But our team name is pretty simple...

Mobotics - a combonation of Mowat (our school) and Robotics. Everything at my school is Mo-something.

Hey, it's great to see so many people responding still to the thread I started last year. And, yes, I did know that Mr. Burns's fighter monkey was Furious George (how could any self-respecting "Simpsons" fan not know that?), but the pun is still funny. Just to update people, we are still The Apes of Wrath, but our robot's name has changed. We were probably going to end up going with Magilla Guerilla (Hanna Barbara cartoon character, c'mon, you know, with the little hat and suspenders), but, since we now have Karate Chop action, we're going with Kong Fu. Any thoughts on that? lol

we r known as team decepticon after the robots from teh old transformers show. yah, they r the bad guys but the name sounds much cooler then auto bot. we wanted team S.L.U.T(Students Loving and Understanding Technology) but it was turned down for obvious reasons. thats preety much the story of our name. now lets get it moving, lol

john scans
team 1019
TEAM DECEPTICON

Ah, yes, the dangerous acronyms. Although we didn't have one as risque as S.L.U.T., we tried to get away with FaSciSts for our science fiction and fantasy book club (it was short for Fantasy and Science Fiction for Students). The administrators, however, weren't too thrilled with us wanting to be the FaSciSts club, for obvious reasons, almost as obvious as S.L.U.T. (risque, but creative, lol).

we choose our team name trying to show how is our project because our project is UNDER CONTROL. got the idea...

LOL!!!

You know, choosing a name can be HARD... The high school is simply "The Pioneers", with a complex Conestoga Wagon logo, and most of the sports teams go with that. The students however weren't crazy about being yet ANOTHER team at the school with the same name.

So the names started coming, and coming, and COMING... We had a HUGE number of random ideas for a team name, but a LOT of them were presented in jest.

At one point during the naming process our team thought about being the "Cow Pi's" with turd hats and a cow's profile logo that looked like the mathematical Pi symbol. :D Needless to say though, of ALL the ideas, the school administration was NOT pleased with being associated with THAT concept. The admin said they didn't care if it was an animal or other choice, but they didn't want to be the "butt" of jokes... We didn't want a fight with them. When we thought about it, we felt we might have a hard time recruiting SPONSORS to that name as well. So we found something else. (We also thought we may not appreciate comments from other teams like "they make crappy robots"... ;) )

After MANY waves of ideas though, we obviously weren't getting anywhere, and were running out of time to decide. I finally simply said to focus everyone: "OK, these are ALL cool ideas, but we now need to choose ONE. So, to show everyone you're SERIOUS about your idea, and present a logo concept as well. You don't have to be an artist, just show us the CONCEPT, and we'll FIND a student with art skills to draw it for you. We'll then choose from THOSE."

Oh boy, THAT quickly separated the REAL suggestions from random prank offerings! To our amazement though, SEVERAL students showed up the next week with EXCELLENT presentations and artwork, and we got down to some SERIOUS name selection! We still had lots of animal or machine/tech thematic items to choose from, but now we could SEE them.

I think the term "Pi High Samurai" was originally forwarded as a gag. However, Jeffrey Nao, a Sophomore with EXCELLENT art skills, ran with it. Jeffrey came up with our incredible Samurai Warrior logo (which you'll see in the Yearbook this year), and it took the student's votes hands down. EVERYONE, students, mentors, teachers, and sponsors alike were pleased with the name. "Pi High" is something the students all call the school anyway, and we all thought Pi High Samurai rolled off the tongue fairly easily. It also had a LOT of interesting thematic opportunities for development of a "team personality" and swap items. Our robot is named Shogun, for "leader of the army".

Now if anyone has a lead of where we can get ahold of a good Samurai Armor suit for our mascot, please email me privately! :D REAL ones are thousands of dollars, so we're now trying to figure out how to have a costume one made cheaply.

- Keith

Ok here comes simplicity..... Bridgewater Raynham Regional High School Trojans with a partnership with Johnson and Johnson. So we dabbled a bit played with some letters and got TJ^2!! As for the robot it just gets a number for the year it played in. For instance last would be 2002

Gila Monsters
 

Our team name is the Gila Monsters (pronounced He la)

We are from Arizona and wanted something distinctive, to represent Arizona and the Southwest. The Gila Monster is one of the few poisonous lizards. Has a terrific bite, and just looks real ominous. Our sponsor is General Motors so the initials worked with our sponsors name also.

Are Motto is: "We Really Bite"
Again reflecting the real Gila Monster, it's also works great if you're winning or losing!

The Robots Names have been Gila I,II,III,IV,V short for
Gil A Monster I,II,III,IV,V

Yeah, that is a really cool story.

I'll never forget the presentation where my friend needed to present on a Greek god, and she was assigned "Hephaestus." She started out standing in the front of the class, pretending to read The Odyssey , then she threw it down and complained "This book is LAME, LAME, LAME!!!" Then she wrote "LAME" on the board in large capital letters. She went on to explain that there really was a god in Greek mythology that was crippled... it was such a good attention getter, I still remember a lot about 'em today.

What a great robot name!

Our name sort of just fell on us. we have students from five schools and it is a vocational center. Our name is CSI: Monroe. The Center for Scientific Intelligence and we all live in Monroe county. Our instructor came up with the name we really didn't have any idea what our team name should be but it doesn't sound to bad. We tried to name our robot Bob the bot but our instructor wouldn't let us so we had to come up with another name. We haven't decided on a name for the bot but if anyone has any suggestion it would be appreciated.

Well, you've got the Oconomowoc High School Cooney
parternered up with Quest Technologies, and hence....you have the Cooney Quest. :cool:

We're Brophy College Preparatory, an all boys school in Phoenix, AZ. We used to be hooked up with Xavier College Prep (all girls school right next door) but this year we each have our own respective team. Our team chose The Dukes as our name since it has all of the masculine undertones (i.e. status, competetiveness, toughness) that we're going for. At this point, we're not sure if we'll keep it from year to year or if we'll create a new "brand" each year.

Our robot is named "Uncomfortable Hunk of Metal" (UHOM). We chose the name last year while we were on our way home from the SoCal Regional in a van. Some students were watching Pulp Fiction and we all agreed that UHOM was a sweet name for the robot after the infamous Christopher Walken (Captain Koons) scene. The name stuck and we think it'll probably last from year to year.

Well, let's see... I don't think that our team has anything interesting, namewise. People don't know us by our team name, so it's as if we don't have one anyway. We are the Bionic Bulldogs. I think it's cause the school's mascot is a bulldog and bionic has to do with mechanics.

A very interesting story, I know, but that's the truth... and the truth is not always the most fun thing in the world.

Amanda

Hey - It's cool to see another High School named the bombers. I went to Kenston High School in Bainbridge Ohio - also with the bomber as a mascot. Our high school taugh bomber pilots for WWII on the weekends, so it was a good fit.

In the age old argument - Knights will beat Lions, or Tigers will beat falcons, a Bomber ALWAYS BEATS EVERYTHING.

WE Are The Red Jammers
Red=East Islip REDmen
Jammers=Our First Sponsor AIL Makes Radio JAMMERS

Where did CircuitRunners come from? Came from me....
We had a brain storming session and I randomly came up with it some how. I was thinking basically circuits and movemnt. Then of course zoneing out was a factor in it. Also i was trying to think of a plauseable logo. I had another cool one. Except, it only made it to the second to last voteing round for names. The runner up name for our team was the name of computer game if any1 was wondering.....

Funny story in short: Members that quit 1 week into program named it at a meeting I couldn't attend. It has stuck ever since.

The Mean Machine

PHRED
 

We chose this as a team because our mascot is a really common one so we wanted something different. It stands for
Philomath High Robotics Engineering Division. We like it and have found lots of ways to have fun with it so far. we have changed our logo each year however as our graphics capabilities have advanced and are hoping to have a new mascot for the team next year instead of a logo override.

school = The Harker School

Harker Robotics Team (hrt)

boring name, but we've got a cool logo to go with it :D (if i do say so myself)

first little bracket thingy is a lowercase "h" without the vertical line, second one is an r, and the third one is part of a "T"

UHS Wolfpack=Unionville Highschool Wolves

I'm not making this up! Zeeland's school mascot is the CHIX! (like baby chicken)

Not much help there! Our name came to us three hours into a bus ride home from CDI a few years back. We wanted a simple name that everyone would remember. B.O.B. Built On Brains.

When I saw the Thunderchickens I thought that was way-cool.

:D

Our name isn't Delphi "Elite"!!
 

Delphi Corporation (Packard Electric Systems)
+
E.L.I.T.E. --> Encourage Learning In Technology and Engineering

= Delphi E.L.I.T.E.


The founding members of Team 48 created the "E.L.I.T.E." acronym in 1998, and it has remained a part of our name ever since. However, using a name like this can be a little risky. Unlike "MOE" or "SPAM" or "BOB", "ELITE" is an acronym that conveys an air of arrogance when you spell it without periods (or say it. Our signature back-and-forth cheer of "DEL-PHI!..........E-LITE!" rolls off the tongue just a tad more smoothly than "DEL-PHI!...........E PERIOD! L PERIOD! I PERIOD! T PERIOD! E PERIOD!!!!!!" ). We make every attempt to use the official form with periods when writing or displaying our team name to indicate that it is an acronym with an honorable meaning instead of some arrogant designation we haughtily chose for ourselves, but undoubtedly, there are those out there that hear our name or see it mistakenly spelled "ELITE" and get the wrong impression. It really doesn't help that the words "ELITE 48" appeared on the back of our yellow polo shirts this past season. Sigh. That uniform design flaw will be eliminated next season.

Maybe our self-generated paranoia would go away if we simply changed our name to "Delphi A.V.E.R.A.G.E."? -->

The

Adult
Volunteer/
Enthusiastic
Raider (high school mascot)
Alliance -
Generating the
Engineers of the Future

We are................AVERAGE. Ho-hum.

Our robot has always been named xtremachen (pronounced just like "Extreme Machine") since our team's inception in '98. Beginning in '99, we've appended a superscript digit to the end of the name to indicate the number of years our team has been a member of FIRST. 2003's creation was xtremachen6.

Because if we were anger, rage, or acrimony we wouldn’t have nearly as much fun with our team name, especially the signs :D. If you really want to know I’d find a Mr. Holton or a Will Pilis or a Sean Munson and ask them. If I had to guess I’d say it came from the whole Achilles Rage thing, but 173 probably didn’t like us using their name so we changed to Fury.

I really want to know where we got the dragon from. Our school has many mascots(and no sports teams.. go figure) but none of them are even close to the dragon. But I love the abstractness of our logo, we should praise whomever made that. Especially the one on the piece of plywood in the Physics lab... even though it looks kind of like a fish.

Our team name is Site 3 Engineering. Why? Im not exactly sure myself, but here's the story that we usually tell.

When it came time to name our team, we didnt have many good ideas...some suggestions are too stupid to mention here. But some guy came up with Side 3, which i guess is a reference to the Gundam anime. I think a side is a space colony, but im not sure since i havent seen much of it besides Wing and 8th MS team.

So, since we were afraid of copyright issues and whatnot, we distorted it to Site 3, and tagged Engineering to the end of it. I guess the name was so different from what we were used to hearing, like *school name* robotics team, so it kinda stuck.

Our robot is named Lil' Mojo partly because our president came up with it off the top of his head, and partly because our school has an interesting cheer called the MOJO, which we got to perform at the Sac and Silicon Valley Regionals.

We're just weird people...so we have weird names...Our team name is The Megaforce Squadron; it's just a corny, geeky name.
The bot name, Spicy Mustard, definitely got us recognized this year. I've been thinking about a bot name for next year, but what can top Spicy?!

Well, as a nickname i call myself the Omega, i have a video production studio now under the name Omega Productions. I thought that if we used a greek letter then we would be able to wear Togas (which would be awesome). So i put up there "Some Greek letter" with the Sigma symbol meaning Sum, we ended up accidently with Sigma, and then we used to square to define that we were two rival schools that combined to form a robotics team, the sum of two cities, or sigma squared.

Im not really sure how we got our team name. We have had it for a few years now. This was my first year. Our robots name is OIY. Which stands for organized Illinois, Iowa youth. One of our team mates remembered hearing it so i guess thats how we got it! I know that is a weird name but it fits our team.
Jaime648

Well, our school mascot is the Cardinal. We build robots.

So "The Robocards" seemed to fit right in! :D