I just moved to a new school and they are going to be having a rookie team. We need some cool names to think a out. I was thinking Team Phenomena. Another suggetionwas to stick with something related to our school : Jenkins Engineering Warriors (J.E.W.S) I really don’t know how that won’t come off as not offensive to some. Any ideas? And if some what are some themes and a motto to go with it?
I think it needs to be a name that came from your team, so that the members of your team can really take ownership of it. Have a brainstorming session at your next meeting. I’m sure the CD community would be happy to help you vet specific ideas and figure out branding for them.
IMHO, I would avoid that particular acronym. A close alternative might be Jenkins Engineering Warrior League (JEWL like jewel) or something like that. Maybe that doesn’t match if there’s a requisite notion of ‘manliness.’
Maybe relevant:
Los Pollos Locos’ name came from a big brainstorming session–it was actually the last one thrown out and didn’t even land on the blackboard before I took the picture of proposed names to email later. We know our lead sponsor’s mascot (the gamecock) invites some…questionable names for teams and robots. It comes down to knowing our team, our community, and our region.
First things first this is not your “name” according to FIRST it is your “Nickname” just so during registration there is no confusion
Back to the point: I agree with Ryan let the founding members help come up with the name, and anything that might be offensive should never be considered
Also I would suggest checking to see if any names already exist as a good rule of thumb (Like 3616 Team Phenomena 
). Also considering that my team also started at a school whose mascot is the Warrior, I like that our teams name is original and not just our mascot.
Hard to go wrong with random name generators on the internet…
Don’t be afraid to be silly. You want people to easily remember who you are.
True, but do remember that you also have to market to sponsors (business cards, press releases, etc). How silly you get may be limited in part by how comfortable you are standing in front of X company big-wig and saying “Hi, we’re ____”. Just something to keep in mind. There are certainly lots of teams with goofy names and plenty of awesome sponsors!
My all time favorite Robotics team name was the “Pink Sparkle Fairy Unicorns”
Yep. An all-girl team. Their teacher says they described it as “the most intimidating name we could come up with… it’s one thing to say you lost to the ‘Super Spider Death Bots’, but no one wants to say they lost to the ‘Pink Sparkle Fairy Unicorns’.”
As it was they took fifth in VEX world programming skills.
A unique team name should also allow you to build a visual presence around the name. I don’t think we have a team named “The Propellor Heads” or “The Rocket Surgeons” (that’s what you get when you cross Brain Surgery and Rocket Science, right…?)
And take it from one who knows… if your team name starts with “Robo_____” or ends in “_____botics” you’ll likely end up sharing a team name with someone. Better to be the “Dung Beetles of Doom” than yet another “____bots”. At least everyone will remember you!
Jason
One of the most effective teams at marketing I have ever met is 1902 Exploding Bacon, who also has one of the most creative yet silly names in FIRST. I actually think having such a name helps them in marketing because it is memorable.
This. The number of teams that fall into those categories for me are very small. If you’re worried people won’t know what you, do what we do: Los Pollos Locos in big letters, “USC/Richland One FIRST Robotics” in finer print.
My favorite naming convention is ____ of ______. Usually it is tool or mechanical thing of really awesome noun!
Gears of Fire
Wrenches of Doom
Saws of Lost Sanity
It also works with Spanish: destornilladores de inspiración, etc.
I’d have to seriously argue against Exploding Bacon being one of the silliest names in FIRST… In fact, the combination of the expressive-yet-very-serious “exploding” and the tempering and flair of “bacon” seems pretty common (in general and on the funniness scale) to me, but ok. Love 'em anyway. 
Now, if they’d been called “floppy pork bottom”…
In general, I think such STEM/serious + unique/flair compounding can definitely make your name memorable: Exploding Bacon, Thunder Chickens, Tactical Sheep, Environmental Tectonics Crusaders, Incredible Hawks, Mighty Monkey Wrenches. It also can’t hurt to think about your full team “brand”: what name might work well with a logo, motto (“OINK OINK–”), etc. You can also do this afterwards to great success, though.
Pick something unique to the school or the area to give the team a local identity. The key here is UNIQUE. An example of not being unique: if your mascot at school is the hawks, and you name yourself the “RoboHawks” I will personally drive to your school, commandeer your TIMS account, and change the name.
Some teams like to go with something associated with their number (like High Rollers are 987). A good self check you can make is going to thebluealliance.com team page, then ctrl+f any name you are considering. If more than one team already uses it, avoid it. Ideally you want to become a well-known team, so have a unique name that people can associate with the quality of your team.
I would also try and avoid common animals or warriors/titans. With over 3000 teams, many of the common team names have been gone for years. Try and think of an outside-of-the-box name. For example, our school’s name is Blair High School so we decided to name our team, The Blair Robot Project, after the movie The Blair Witch Project.
If you’re afraid that you won’t be comfortable presenting your name in front of sponsors, just have your name be an acronym with an unofficial meaning.
I agree, name picking should be a team decision. It’s one of the first times you get to see how the team decision dynamic will work with your team.
When deciding our name for Spectrum I think it took us about 4 hours and it was the final name suggested. Some of the others on the list pangea, something something kittens, duct tape was involved in several of them. Lots of them were bad but we ended up with a brand we really like.
We looked at this list to see if any other teams had similar names: https://my.usfirst.org/frc/scoring/index.lasso?page=teamlist
On our team we have essentially 2 names. Our name that we use with sponsors is Hart District Robotics or Hart Robotics (though there is now a separate Hart High School team). However our name for the past decade has been Harburn Robotics and that’s what we use when we are at competitions, logo, and team spirit stuff. We generally try to limit the use of Hartburn to being purely a nickname just because its much harder to seriously market to sponsors.
In my opinion the team name is the first part of the team’s marketing/sales pitch to sponsors. When I say this though, it really is only the case for teams who are starting up. However in my experience sponsors will more likely sponsor a team that serves an entire community (in my case our community has around a dozen high schools) than just a single school team. In that sense if you can somehow associate your team name with your region, school district, city, or something of that source, it could go a long way towards getting sponsors to take you seriously from the first impression. In particular in places that have very few teams it gives the impression that you serve a larger area and thus larger population, which would make it easier for a sponsor to justify funding the team with larger sums of money.
This is just my 2 cents about naming teams.
This obviously isn’t the FIRST priority in picking a name, but be sure your name can be shortened to something that can be said quickly in a match. In strategy huddles, while coaching, and some other scenarios, it’s really handy to be able to say “chickens”, “simbots”, “aces”, or “OP” than to have to say “terminal velocity”. It turns out, “Shaker Robotics” is way easier to shorten.
Just stating that Team 987 is the Highrollers, Aces High is 176, but nonetheless I agree with your point. I would suggest associating it with your school, team number, or something else about your team.
Better example, FRC39 (now not playing) went by “39th Aero Squadron”, naming their team after an air group in one of the world wars.
(Oh, and on unique/intimidating names, particularly in FLL: try an all-boys team going by “Pretty Pink Princesses of DOOM!” for some scary factor. Yes, one did compete under that name…)
I would make sure you check the blue alliance. I did a quick search on cougar and found 3 cougar robotics, 5 cougarbots, and 19 teams with cougar in their name.