Acceptable Name?
 

Could we have a team theme/name that formed the acronym "BANG"? We do not mean this to be a sexual acronym but as an explosion.

Also could we use "arse" or the other name for butt that has two "s" in it in our theme/name, not in sexual way again but for "bad arse/the other"?

opinions please

Re: Acceptable Name?
 

Generally, these are questions you should ask yourself and your team. FIRST is a large international non-profitable organization with over 50,000 students participating in the high school program. As a team, you are representing FIRST in your high school and in your local community. Keep in mind that there are members of that community who are quite young. Do you feel comfortable with presenting that image?

Personally, I see no problem with the BANG acronym. I don't think people will make the connection you're worrying about, especially if you don't lead them down that path with marketing materials etc etc. I'd advise, however, against giving your robot that name. I feel as though you're selling the hard work that the team is putting in a bit short. Do you want to go up to people and say, Hello, we're from team xyz and this is our robot "***"? I wouldn't want that on my team. Just my $0.02.

As for if it's technically allowed? I'm not sure. I do know that the MC's will not announce that name at the regionals, and I doubt FIRST would put it in the program book. More than anything, remember that you're representing your school, your community and FIRST robotics. Any materials you create should adhere to the image that you and your team wish to present.

Re: Acceptable Name?
 

Have you considered being team roflcopter? REX was almost roflcopter before we decided on REX.

Re: Acceptable Name?
 

Billfred can probably shed some more light on this story, but a team he is involved with is sponsored by the University of South Carolina. Their mascot is the Gamecock, a fighting rooster. So when the team was first being developed a name thrown out was "The (second half of Gamecock) Bots," but they felt it was inappropriate for FIRST. I would say keep it rated G to make everyone comfortable.

P.S. I posted this and it was censored, so it was probably a good decision not to go with that name.

Re: Acceptable Name?
 

At our first regional last year, we hadn't come up with a name for our robot. We ended up telling the people there "G-Thuggin" as a joke, and they went with it. Be careful what you name yourselves, even as a joke.

Re: Acceptable Name?
 

What if you put a word infront of BANG to help clear up any miscomunicaton?

Big B.A.N.G.

or rather then have yourself known as the acronym, have what the acronym stands for be the "official" name of your team, and BANG be a nickname that appears with graphics showing some fire explosion?

Re: Acceptable Name?
 

Re: Acceptable Name?
 

When choosing a name and establishing yourselves in the community, questions to think about are:

What is the purpose of the team?
Who will the team be interacting with in the community?
How will the decisions made impact sponsors and potential sponsors?
What are the short term and long term goals of the team? Are the decisions reflecting them well?
Is the attention that the team is trying to grab, positive or negative? Does it matter?
What's in a name?

Those are a few questions for you, as a team, to talk about in helping you arrive to your decision. Promotion and marketing is the other part of this and presents opportunity for helping to develop the team branding/reputation. With that comes more questions that the team should be asking and exploring.

Good luck this season!

Jane

Edit: Richard just did an excellent job of showing the positive potential of BANG as a name and in the promotion/marketing side of things. The Big BANG is a great suggestion - BANG for short.

Re: Acceptable Name?
 

Along those lines, your team motto could be
"Soft kitty, warm kitty
Little ball of furr
Happy kitty, sleepy kitty
purr, purr, purr..."

:rolleyes:

Re: Acceptable Name?
 

I think bang is perfectly appropriate. I doubt anyone will hear that as your team name and think it's sexual. Anything like arse, however, I would say is inappropriate. This goes back to a rule of thumb we used to hear more often, "Act like your grandmother is watching you." If you would have any problem telling your team name to a grandparent, parent, school administrator, Dean Kamen, Woodie Flowers, or the President of the United States, etc. then do not use the name. Otherwise, let the creativity flow.

Re: Acceptable Name?
 

This reminds me of 2008, our rookie year as a FRC team.

Everyone on the team played a lot of World of Warcraft(WoW), thus we decided to make our team theme based off WoW. We made our logo to look like the WoW logo, we referred to tools as weapons in WoW, and we jokingly implemented skill 'leveling' for team members.

Then it came time to name our robot. It didn't take long before the name "Leroy Jenkins", a name of a WoW character that has a video on youtube with over twenty-two million views, came to mind. We proceded to officially call the robot Leroy Jenkins without hesitation. The name solidified after a local news paper put on the headlines of the front page (with very big letters) "LEROY JENKINS SHIPS OFF", after our ship date.

Not long after that release in the new paper people started to explain to us a man that used to live in our town named Leroy Jenkins, about 15 years ago. Little did we know that it turns out he was a very bad man. He was a false paster selling very over priced holy things, he got devoiced three times, was a rapist, burned people's houses down...pretty everything you can do to leave a bad legacy. To say the least the city kicked him out of town, and now he lives in Florida...doing his thing.

The shock in the community that we named our robot after this man was enormous. At one point the president of our largest sponsor called us, and told us if we didn't change the name the company would pull out as a sponsor. Yeah, it was a mess. From that point on we had to call the robot just Leroy.

Ahhh...memories. Coming back to the original point. I don't think it will be that bad of a name. I would ask around what some people think of it before moving forward though.

Re: Acceptable Name?
 

All this is true,

But some of my favorite FRC names are dangerous-sounding. For example, Exploding Bacon is a name that I particularly like. The team will often feature a cartoon of a pig riding a rocket (which implies the idea of "when pigs fly"). Which, in my humble opinion, is totally awesome!

Its a good idea to include something visual in your name so that the artistic students can explore their abilities too. The Gear Heads come to mind as an example here. They have hats with the teeth of a gear attached to the top of the hat. So when they wear the hats they literally become "gear-heads".

An example of a less viable name would be something like "Moments of Inertia". Its sounds great, its harmless, implies techo -- but what would your mascot look like? What would you draw a picture of to represent your team's name? Its abstract and maybe too techno to appeal to a wider audience for team identification

If you do pick a potentially non-PC word, its probably a good idea to pair it up with something that ensures that the overall meaning is meant to be funny. Blasting Fireworks, Manic Mechanics, Swingin’ Miss’s (my favorite for women's softball team) , are just some ideas to get you started brainstorming.

Have fun, and be sure to post what your team has decided.

Keith Hall
Mentor 2171

Re: Acceptable Name?
 

Screaming Helium!

I loved the name, but the rest of the team didn't. :p

Re: Acceptable Name?
 

Screaming Helium!

I love that name!! If you don't use it -- I'm calling dibs on it for my next year rookie FLL team.

I can already see the little round atom of Helium with its two electron eyes and its wide-open screaming mouth. Awesome visual, great name. Thanks for idea!!

Keith Hall
Mentor 2171

Re: Acceptable Name?
 

Yup, that's what I was going to do also, or something with it on fire. Too bad Helium isn't flammable. :(

Go ahead and use it. Whenever you cheer though, you have to inhale some helium and scream in a high pitched voice! :D

Re: Acceptable Name?
 

I don't see a problem using the name B.A.N.G. as long as it's an acronym and you make it a point to tell people what the acronym means.

I remember a team around 2006/2007/2008 that used the name B.A.M.F. - anyone that's been around the internet once or twice knows what that could mean, but that team made it a point to put the meaning of the Acronym under their name anywhere it was shown. IIRC, it meant "Big Awesome Mighty Fighters".

Re: Acceptable Name?
 

This is actually a good idea. Our team, The Ultimate Protection Squad, is known as just that at regionals and to other teams, even though our members shorten it to UPS (which could run into other issues, such as trademark/copyright or other idea/word-stealing laws like that).

Re: Acceptable Name?
 

well just think about when you meet and greet parents, younger students, or very professional people and future sponsors, would you wanna be called arse? B.A.N.G. sounds fine to me, when i heard it i thought nothing sexual like

Re: Acceptable Name?
 

It would never come into my head that bang was a bad name.
What our head mentor says is "if my eight year old dauter cannot hear it do not say/write it.

Re: Acceptable Name?
 

As someone who was in the room when this discussion happened, and as a graduate of USC, shed light I shall.

Nobody around campus, or even the state of South Carolina for that matter, bats an eye when someone shortens up Gamecocks. (Matter of fact, the shortened version makes it into the University's fight song twice.) Our mascot is Cocky, our football's offense is referred to as (that)-'N-Fire by certain Head Ball Coaches. However, modern interpretations of the word have caused the University to take a careful posture with it. They still lay claim to the trademark, but their trademark licensing documents (PDF link) explicitly prohibit using it by itself without some other trademark alongside it.

Considering how easily one can veer off the straight and narrow with the term (we won't talk about some of the bumper stickers seen around here), and considering that we were talking about high schoolers potentially traveling beyond areas where USC is USC, not South Carolina, we thought better of it. (Even going with Los Pollos Locos hasn't completely cleared us; I can't think of a time we've won a judged award where whoever wrote the citation for the emcee didn't work "cocky" into it.)

The moral of the story? Context is king. Considering how many other pyro-minded team names there are in FRC (Exploding Bacon, TnT, HOT, Fondy Fire...), I doubt you'd run into much trouble from others with BANG if you were consistent with its use in the explosive sense. (Truthfully, I wouldn't even have thought about it that way if you hadn't mentioned it...but my mind is like that.)

Just one requirement, though--your arm will have to pivot out and unfurl the team logo.

Re: Acceptable Name?
 

I think BANG is just fine for a name...but I'd like to add a caution. Team THRUST is an amazing team that has been around longer then I've been aware of FIRST. They have always gone by Team THRUST with a heavy use of aviation for their theme. However, their members were getting teased at school by other high schoolers that were a bit less civil. Eventually, there was a push to change the name by the students yet they were known by everyone in FIRST as team THRUST and they'd have to rebuild their name. I don't think they ended up changing their name, but I can't recall. I don't see BANG as suggestive, but some high schoolers might and it could lead to troubles in that manner. However, it really depends on the school and the way you present it within the school. I'd consider announcing the team as that name around the school(kind of a trial run) and see what kind of response you get. I don't think you'd get anything bad, but its better safe then sorry.

Disclaimer: I'm not on the team nor was I on their school. If anyone was or can correct anything I might have misspoken, I'd appreciate it.

Re: Acceptable Name?
 

So you're looking for a name, which you want everyone to 'know' stands for Bad A$$ something something *and* has a 'plausibly deniable' sexual connotation?
If you tiptoe on the edge of suggestive, you will occasionally fall on the wrong side.
And nobody will think your team is 'bad'.
You're nerds like the rest of us. :)

Re: Acceptable Name?
 

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

my grandma swears more than me :P

Re: Acceptable Name?
 

I go to an all boys high school where even the slightest sexual innuendo (in your endo *snicker*) is met with all kinds of hootin' and hollerin' and have been there for 3.5 years now, so my mind is pretty much trained to be dirty. When I saw BANG, my first thought was a gun shot, more specifically, the type of gun BillFred posted. I think you'll be fine.

Re: Acceptable Name?
 

I agree that BANG could be used very well as a team name. If you do make an abbreviation for that I would avoid using any sort of expletive even though some companies do (they actually did some work at the business my mom works for that is how I know them).

I think the sexual connotation you are worried about with bang as a singular term is starting to phase out, attach an -ing to that and it is more likely to have a sexual connotation though.