What Should the Toronto WNBA Franchise be Named?

With the announcement of the Golden State Valkyries on Tuesday, Toronto sports fans have one thing on their mind — what moniker will the new Toronto team adopt?

What’s in a name? A lot apparently. Especially when it comes to sports.

On Tuesday morning, the new WNBA expansion franchise coming out of Golden State announced they would be called the Golden State Valkyries (Val-kreez). Valkyries are known in mythology as female warriors who escorted souls of the dead to Valhalla.

It’s a nod to the NBA sibling franchise (Golden State Warriors), but the team opted to go with a Violet and Black colour way as opposed to the blue and gold the NBA Warriors theme.

With this news, Toronto sports fans have been debating on what the eventual Toronto franchise should be named.

I’m not gonna lie — I have opinions. Let me explain.

Naming a sports franchise is an important task, but naming a women’s sports franchise is a whole different situation. The name needs to be thought out and nuanced to avoid being cliche or frustrating. It needs to last through trends and time, never get old, and be strong.

Specifically, here are some criteria I personally have for naming a women’s sports franchise:

• Nothing weather related (the WNBA has SO many weather teams)
• No pluralized teams (Heat, Sky, Smoke, etc) — lacks personality, in my opinion
• Not inherently feminized, “girly,” or soft just because it’s a women’s team
• Not named after a men’s franchise or in relation to a men’s franchise (Huskies, or anything Raptors related in our case)

In my opinion, the name Valkyries is pretty strong, with a few faults. The biggest just being that it’s a complicated word that doesn’t easily roll off the tongue. The second fault is how it’s basically just a way to say “female Warriors.” I get it, since the team is under the same ownership of the Warriors, and they were creative with picking a cool way to say “female Warriors,” but the implication is still there. I get over that a little with the choice of picking a unique colour scheme.

The thing with Toronto’s WNBA franchise is that it will have no affiliation with the Toronto Raptors. MLSE opted to not submit the bid, and while Larry Tanenbaum is still chairman of MLSE, the ownership group Kilmer Sports Inc is not affiliated with MLSE. So, there’s no reason to link their identity with the Raptors.

That also means MLSE would have to release the name “Toronto Huskies” in order for the WNBA to use it. It’s a cool name, but I personally think this new franchise needs to create their own identity as opposed to linking themselves with a men’s team of the past.

Here are some criteria I think should go INTO picking a Toronto WNBA team:

• Something with a link to true Toronto culture or history, not a stereotypical cliche Toronto or Canadian name.
• A name that is genderless — like Storm, Aces, etc. and not inherently feminine
• Again, no Canadian cliches, that includes Drake
• A name that is strong, powerful, intimidating to opponents, so basically not soft.
• Something with a strong brand identity — we want cool swag. Say what you will about the Raptors, but dinosaurs are awesome and make cool art/merch/apparel.

You can see how difficult this is going to be, right? Words have meaning (my degree in English Rhetoric is coming out) and the name needs to be layered, multifaceted, and not just picked to hit a trend, match a vibe, or please an audience.

It also becomes more difficult when naming a women’s team because of societal biases. Unfortunately, society still sees things that are inherently feminine as “weak,” which we don’t want.

Also, you have to understand that the WNBA is a diverse league containing people of varying identities. How is it fair to name a team something that screams “feminine” when a lot of the players in the league don’t identify in that way?

It makes me think back to the first women’s sports teams — like the Edmonton Grads or the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, where they were forced to wear skirts and makeup and be ladylike and appeal to the male gaze.

I don’t want my WNBA team to be ladylike and appealing to men, I want them to be badass and win championships. You can empower women without falling to society’s outdated views of women-hood.

Anyway, here are a few Toronto team name options and ideas I have seen floating around that I like:

• Something to do with Dragons, Toronto Dragons: Cool, fire imagery, genderless, badass, can match with any colour.
• Toronto Sirens: Sirens are kinda evil in mythology, which I think is cool for a team. Who says we have to be nice?
• On that note, lets reclaim the word Witch in some way
• I like the idea of leaning into mythology a little if we can avoid, again, overtly girly names
• Shoutout Jerome Cheng, who like the name Toronto Gyaldems — not sure that’s exactly the one but I like the idea of hitting on the diverse Caribbean culture Toronto has.
• Something with Snakes — snakes are cool af.

Told you I had OPINIONS.

We need this name to last decades, more. It can’t be rushed or not properly thought out. The franchise needs a strong identity and the name is probably the most important part of that.

So, what do you think? What should Toronto name the WNBA team?