Bear metal usually does Bear puns in the robot names (2011 was Ursa Major/Ursa Minor for the mini-bot, 2012 was Bearmageddon, 2013 Bearadactyl, and 2015 is Xcalibear (the X signifying their 10th robot)).
that being said, the robot names are like flavor text to me; they’re fun when they’re clever, but I mostly ignore them in favor of saying the team’s name or number and the year, which are what actually matter to me
It’s team tradition to name the robot Rowdy “insert team year here”. It gets a little confusing since the team started in 2000 with Rowdy 1. Overall I’ve never really heard any Indiana team refer to another Indiana team’s robot by its name, just by its year (i.e. Cyber Blue’s 2014 robot)
IIRC Every robot by 71 is called the Beast. Then again, anything related to Hammond is just called “Beast”.
I agree. Engineers used to be much better at this, and it is to our discredit that has fallen by the wayside.
If someone tells you they used “The Lord Chancellor”](http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/online_science/explore_our_collections/objects/index/smxg-59282) to measure a part, aren’t you inclined to trust them?
Or if the locomotive is named the Rocket, wouldn’t you assume it goes fast?
Or if you call your airplane the Flyer, presumably it really does fly?
Really only boats have carried on the tradition of great individual names that (in my opinion) all technology should live up to…
We’ve historically had the theme of warlords, though we’ve strayed a bit in recent years.
2008: Xerxes
2009: Auto Von Bismarck
2010: Cixi
2011: Ivan the Terrible
2012: Yaroslavl
2013: Sun Tzu
2014: Odin
2015: Valkyrie
2016: Orion
Our team has had a lot of great names but Oddjob (2013) and Tiny Tim XL (2014) are my favorites… They both came easily to the team because of some funny inside joke during the season.
We’ve decided to start a four year naming cycle so each class only builds one of every robot. Ultraviolet, Gamma Ray, Infrared, and X-ray our robots. This year is the first to reuse a name its Violet 2016 or Violet II or something like that, the ending isn’t settled yet. No one needs a robot named Visible, Radio, or Microwave (one of our old Vex robots was Microwave). Practice robots normally get odd names Oscar, Domino, etc. This whole system could change if some robot ends up needing a better.more fitting name.
2014: SmaugBot (obviously from The Hobbit)
2015: Debbie (from the seahorse episode of Spongebob)
2016: Calcifer (a fire demom from some anime, I think)
I don’t remember the name of our 2013 bot from 415.
When I was a student on 1189, we named our robots, alternating between male and female names/robots, trying to relate the name to the game, and we tried to go in alphabetical order. This particular practice was short-lived: it started in 2006 and ended in 2010. It was important to us to pick names that would work easily in conversation and would make us feel like we were talking about an actual person.
2006: Balzac (don’t remember the story behind this one)
2007: Charlotte (after the spider in Charlotte’s Web, makes sense for the game)
2008: Atlas (technically after this guy, but we also had a lot of Ayn Rand readers on the team that year…) (alphabetically out of order)
2009: Diana (goddess of the moon)
2010: Erdos (no relation to the game, notable mathematician)
The name was decided based on a team vote, and the practice stopped in 2011 because we couldn’t decide on a name as a team. The team still names their robots but I don’t know how that decision is made nowadays.
The naming was more for internal purposes; I don’t think anyone ever expected anyone outside our team to remember the names, but to us, the names made the robots feel more like our children, our own creation, and we felt more invested in them. We always referred to the robot by its name, and rarely called them just “the robot”. If I tried to explain the connection I felt with Atlas (my first robot), you would probably think I was crazy, and I don’t think I would have that connection if he didn’t have a name.
That being said…whenever I talk/ed to someone else about those robots, I refer to them as “our 2008 robot”, etc, because I never expect anyone else to remember the names. I think the only robot name from another team that I remember is 148’s Tumbleweed.
I don’t think it matters how a team names their robot as long as it works for them. Names in general do look good on promotional material (i.e. “Team 9999 Proudly Presents: ROBOTNAME”). As a lot of others have said, hardly anyone really remembers the robot names anyways - it only works in conversation if both parties know the robot’s name, which rarely happens, so eventually it just becomes “hey remember that feature from 469’s 2010 robot” etc.
You expect me to remember not only every team’s name and number but now every robot’s name from every year!?!?!? Yeah, that’s never going to happen.
I’ll stick to the “Team Name/Number - Year Robot” convention.
I’ve always heard that “raptor” is a cursed name (just ask 254). Otherwise I like descriptive (not overly( and memorable names. Like the ones 118 has used the last few years.
I personally enjoy naming robots and frequently try to remember the names of as many robots as possible. When a robot is given a good name, it helps (in my opinion) individualize it and give it some character/personality. Not everyone is going to bother remembering names, though. It’s a lot easier to just remember the team number and the year the robot was made. To each their own, I guess. Might as well drop a list of 1902’s robot names while I’m here 
2007: Fire Pig
2008: Walrus Pig
2009: B.D.P.
2010: Bacon Strips
2011: Disco Pig
2012: Porcus Magnus
2013: W-Ham-O
2014: Boxer
2015: Pork Lift
2016: Battering Ham
We name both our competition and practice/second robots each year.
2006 The Revolver
2007 Mantis, IRI: Nessie
2008 Thaddeus
2009 μ and Sherman
2010 Scorpion and Kirby
2011 Sampson, Destroyer of Worlds, Minibot: He-man, Master of the Universe; Squeaky, Minibot: Pipsqueaky
2012 Swish and Mordecai
2013 Whisbee and Rizzler
2014 Jaws and Inertia
2015 A.N.D.Y. and The Claw
2016 Knight Fury and Ballista
S.P.A.M. has named its robot each year based on either some specific feature or characteristic, an inside joke or pun, or some random name that was thrown out on the table and stuck for reasons unknown. If you scroll through their robot photos at the bottom of their history page, you’ll see the names as you mouse over each photo. I’m pretty fond of this year’s “Brave Sir Lobbin’”, but it all started with the rookie year robot Kenny (from South Park) because it kept dying.
I love robot names. They add a sense of pride to the team, and while they might not stick in other teams memories as much as the team number and game year each robot is unique and deserves some recognition.
We started giving robots and practice robots unique names starting in 2014. Before 2014 they were all Land Shark Mk 1, 2, etc.
This year comp bot is Quickstrike and our practice robot is Farquad.
This is the first year we’ve officially ‘named’ a robot. We found it much easier to refer to the bucket of bolts than just “The robot”, since where we work there are 2 other robots being built at the same time, so “the robot” isn’t very helpful.
We called it Donkey given all the “I like that boulder” jokes at Kickoff.
We also called it Donkey because whenever we have to troubleshoot or repair something it’s a pain in the $@#$@#$@#.
This is generally how I refer to most teams’ robots in the past. Unless it’s a handful of memorable robots (Simbot Jordan, Batman & Robin, Tumbleweed…), I’ll go “Hey, remember [team]'s robot in 2013?”
For the most part, that’s because I can’t remember all the names, but I remember what they looked like.
For 1923’s robot names, anyone on the team can suggest a robot name - but the seniors get to vote on it. We like this, and it feels the most ‘theirs’. In the last few years we’ve also named the practice robot.
Sometimes they’re silly, sometimes they’re ‘cool’… For the most part, I like the later few years of names a lot better than our early days.
2006: Sir-Lance-A-Bot
2007: Optimus Prime
2008: Knight Rider
2009: Low Budget Awesome - this robot didn’t actually have a name, until a judge decided this was its name. It stuck.
2010: Wo-bot
2011: La Flama Blanca
2012: La Flama Azul - this was the closest we ever got to a ‘naming scheme’- two years in a row…
2013: RoBART - for my father.
2014: Tactical Snail - after a snapchat joke caught on. Practice robot, Turbo.
2015: MKI: X - our tenth machine. Practice robot, X-terminator
2016: Knightmare. Practice robot, Loaded Griller #6 Combo. (sigh.)
When I was at Clarkson & working with 229, all the robots had math-related names. That tradition is no longer around 
Like Eric said, on 1675 we mainly name as an image/internal/pride thing.
They were all mostly UPS puns, but In our 10th year (2014) we wanted to reinvigorate our “superhero team” image and have been naming our competition/practice bots after superheros/their real names since.
2005: Super Uper
2006: Super Uper Mk 2 / Holey Ghost (The robot had a lot of speedholed polycarb…)
2007: Super Uper Mk 3 / Sky Crane
2008: Mach 1675 (Like Speed Racer’s Mach 5)
2009: Nom-V (our intake belt eventually had big chevrons)
2010: Uptimus Prime 6 (6th bot, and kicker mechanism sounded like a transformer while reloading)
2011: Uptisaurus Rex (roller claw looked like a dinosaur head)
2012: Uptius Erving (named after Dr. J)
2013: Upollo’s Chariot
2014: Professor X (comp) / Charles Xavier (practice) - 10th year (X) plus the name sounded cool.
2015: Atlas (comp) / Erik Josten (practice) - Lifting things I guess, and he was from Milwaukee
2015: The Punisher (comp) / Frank Castle (practice) - His last name is Castle! Also we got to put sweet skulls on our claw.
3061’s names by year, some interesting stories:
2009: serik (team composed largely of trekkies)
2010: serik (same thing)
2011: Steve (name tag with “hello my name is steve” found in KOP for no apparent reason)
2012: Lucy (team voted, 1st trophy in team history earned, starting traditional female naming)
2013: Sally (names voted from here out)
2014: Annie
2015: Bonnie
2016: Morgana
Since this has turned into a “list your robot names thread,” I wanna play along.
2006: Dawgma I
2007: Deuce
2008: Galactus
2009: Alice
2010: Darwin
2011: Geoffrey
2012: Darryl
2013: Oddjob
2014: Peter the Great Egg
2015: Kaylee
2016: Sleipnir
We don’t build practice bots, so no practice bots to name. However we do have a gradually evolving test chassis (primarily used for programming and occassionally serving food) named Runt.