We covered my favorite tree options here. We covered canines here. And here’s an old-school let-the-name-happen-organically plan. Time for some plants!
Existing Plant Teams
Plants are not a common source for team names. The only major sport franchise is the Toronto Maple Leafs. The leaf is pluralized as any proper noun (Leafs not Leaves) and that adds a bit of weirdness to what is otherwise a straight-forward choice. The Canadian flag features a big maple leaf… Toronto is in Canada. It’s not the most inspired team name, but it has an unarguable charm.
Minor league baseball is probably the best source for precedents with several examples. The Cedar Rapids Kernels. Hillsboro Hops. Clinton LumberKings. Idaho Falls Russets. Oakland Acorns. Selma Cloverleafs (again not Leaves). Palatka Azaleas. Hammond Berries. Those are all… interesting I guess. Nothing is really broadly appealing, but they have their local reasoning. The NC options are surprisingly good, really. First up, Reapers.
Reapers
This red hot pepper looks like a bumpy habanero with a tail. It was developed by Ed Currie in… South Carolina. Oof, I feel like that’s a mild strike against. However, Carolina Reapers is a solid team name. It has a clear double-meaning overlapping the name of the pepper with the Grim Reaper. Plenty of logo and theme options to work from.
Raleigh Reapers gains the alliterative appeal, but loses some of the double-meaning. Yeah, we can still see the connection to the plant, but it’s not as crisp. Next up is the official vegetable of North Carolina- the sweet potato. This is a sneaky-cool option with one achilles heel.
Sweet Potatoes
Sweet potatoes grow purple, white, and orange so we have a decent under-used color palette to work with. Obvious concessions menu options abound. Though technically a botanically incorrect nickname, “Yams” is a great alternate branding. “How’d the Yams do tonight?” Just great. Now for the main weakness of the concept- kinda what we began with looking at the Maple Leafs- a weird plural problem.
If we want to keep to the proper noun grammar we can do “Raleigh Sweet Potatos.” But not only is that a common spelling error, it looks unfinished. An apostrophe doesn’t really help, “Potato’s.” So we’re left with, “Potatoes.” That’s just a mess not worth dealing with. Sorry Yams, I don’t think it’s meant to be. Now for my favorite plant, held for last, the Venus Flytrap.
Flytraps
Venus Flytraps are super duper native to North Carolina. Less than a hundred mile radius (including a smidge of SC) holds all the native population in the world! Raleigh Flytraps. Carolina Flytraps. Both good options.
It’s just about the coolest plant around- eating insects to add nitrogen to its diet. Carnivorous plant? Sign me up. I like the Venus angle for some rare planetary themed events and alt logos (Star Wars night? It’s a Trap!). Any dropped fly balls will bring mocking jeers. But not with sticky flytrap-styled baseball gloves!
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