Worst. Name. Ever.

7/20/2006 9:04:03 AM

agreed. The carolina nachos sound better, and has just as much symbolic relation to NC.

7/20/2006 9:08:54 AM

???

7/20/2006 9:09:21 AM

Mmmm.....nachos.

[Edited on July 20, 2006 at 9:13 AM. Reason : ^ http://carolinarailhawks.com/]

7/20/2006 9:13:10 AM

i wonder how many black guys are on the silverbacks

7/20/2006 9:15:12 AM

could be much worse, railhawk doesn't seem too bad

7/20/2006 10:06:39 AM

no really. What is a railhawk? Someone tell me cause I don't know.

7/20/2006 10:09:46 AM

who was the marketing genious who came up with that one?


Carolina Railhawks =/= roll off the tongue

7/20/2006 10:10:21 AM

wasn't there a contest to pick the name?

I can't imagine how bad the 2nd place name was.

7/20/2006 10:11:45 AM

Quote :

"The team invited fans to make suggestions -- a list of nearly 1,000 names. Among the suggestions were Railhawks, Copperheads and Clash."

told you it could be worse, we were almost the clash

[Edited on July 20, 2006 at 10:16 AM. Reason : ]

7/20/2006 10:16:05 AM

Quote :

"no really. What is a railhawk? Someone tell me cause I don't know."

Quote :

"The name RailHawks combines the ideas of a railroad – the first mass transportation that helped expand America; and the Hawk – a cunning and masterful bird of prey. Further research reveals the story of Cary’s heritage, which began in 1750 as a settlement named Bradford’s Ordinary. By the mid-1800’s, the Seaboard and North Carolina Railroads formed a junction in Cary used as a stop for coal and iron, which brought rapid growth to the area. Often found flying high above North Carolina railroads is the Red Tail Hawk, the most common raptor in the region. The largest of it’s breed, the Red Tail Hawk is a masterful predator, who is so fearless and cunning that its been known to steal the prey of other raptors when especially hungry, and occasionally kill a chicken several times its size."

http://www.carolinarailhawks.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=25&Itemid=40

7/20/2006 1:02:31 PM

okay, i feel better now. thanks. Go Railhawks.

7/20/2006 1:12:01 PM

Quote :

"who was the marketing genious who came up with that one? Carolina Railhawks =/= roll off the tongue"

The head of the will-be team's fan club actually in a contest for potential names with a prize of lifetime free tickets.

I pointed out to him last night this seems a bit unfair.

http://www.trisoccerfan.com

[Edited on July 20, 2006 at 1:19 PM. Reason : .]

7/20/2006 1:18:51 PM

should be the Carolina DamnYankees

7/20/2006 1:58:46 PM

Carolina Randomashellcombinationoftwonouns

I would suggest a name change to the

Carolina Crackwhores

7/20/2006 3:26:18 PM

hahahahha, all you people talking shit when you didnt even know anything about cary, see it was a good name and the guy that runs the triangle soccer website was the one with the name...

7/20/2006 4:18:26 PM

http://trisoccerfan.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=255

Quote :

"As the name of the new USL-1 franchise in Cary was unveiled Wednesday night, I'm sure quite a few fans were left scratching their heads and wondering "What the [expletive deleted] is a Railhawk?" So I thought I'd take a minute to explain the genesis of the name itself and what stood out about the name that I thought would make it a good moniker for our local soccer club. To clear things up immediately though, let me assure you that a "Railhawk" is not a real animal, nor even a real word as far as we know. But then again, there is no rule that says a brand image (which, let's admit it, is all a sports team name is) must be a word taken from the Oxford English Dictionary. (Think 76'ers). So when the name the team contest was announced back in late January, my buddy Jonathan and I, who, at least in our own minds, are the biggest soccer fans in the Triangle, knew that it was imperative that we pool our cognitive resources. Certainly, between his encyclopedic knowledge of all things soccer (all sports for that matter) and my background as a marketing manager, surely we could come up with a name that would get selected to be the new team name. Between early February and late May, Jonathan and I spent a lot of time in my living room, with the big-screen TV tuned in to Setanta, GolTV, or FSC, bouncing name possibilities off of each other hoping they would stick. For a few months, it seemed like a futile effort but at least we were starting to make some progress agreeing on some of the characteristics the name had to possess. 1. Local Soccer, more than perhaps any other sport, is about locality. If you're from a small town in England, you support your local side in League 2, not the glitzy Premiership team from the next town over. To this end, we both felt that the team should have the Cary name incorporated into it. Our ideas ranged from simple and traditional, like Cary Towne FC, to more Americanized versions like Cary Cardinals. But the more we thought about it, the more we realized that there was no avoiding the use of a regional name. Cary would be exclusive of other towns around the Triangle and there was no way to avoid a name like Carolina or Triangle in the moniker. 2. Traditional More than anything we wanted the name to be traditional, in a footballing sense. But recently MLS has been beating this idea to death. The first instance, DC United, has worked pretty well, but since then they've gone from okay (FC Dallas) to strange (Real Salt Lake) to down right farcical (Houston 1836). With the European tradition being to include the town name, we found this difficult based on the obstacles we identified in requirement 1. We were left with names like Carolina FC or Raleigh-Durham United and there just wasn't anything in the list that struck our fancy. We tried going through a list of every team name in all four professional divisions in England but nothing that we liked also met requirement number 3. 3. Relevant The team name had to in some way connect the team, the region, and the fans. While we loved traditional sounding names, e.g., Carolina Rovers, there just wasn't a connection between the names and the local area. We then tried attacking from another angle -- identify characteristics of the region and turn that into a name. This has worked for other USL-1 teams like the Seattle Sounders, Portland Timbers, Virginia Beach Mariners, and the Puerto Rico Islanders, but we ran into a huge roadblock when we came to the realization the Triangle area is completely non-descript. Sure, North Carolina has beaches, mountains, Cape Fear, tons of military bases, even a rich Scottish heritage...but none of that describes the Raleigh-Durham area. The single characteristic that stood out for us was the Neuse River, but even that doesn't really draw a strong association with the Triangle. Considering that USL had already seen franchises in the Riverhawks and Riverhounds, we decided to move on. Finally we stumbled upon a theme that truly interested us --the Railroad. The genesis of this idea was really my 5 year old son Max. When he was younger, he was deathly afraid of loud noises. When we would go to the Raleigh Elite matches at SAS Soccer Park, he would get terrified everytime a train barreling down the CSX line across from the ground would hit one of the many whistle posts along East Chatham Steet. Eventually he grew out of his phobia, but to this day, he still notes it to me whenever a train passes, which, as anyone that has spent anytime out at SAS Soccer Park can tell you, is a fairly routine basis. Once we started to explore the railroad idea, we discovered the fact that Cary grew up from a settlement called Bradford's Ordinary which truly started to blossom in the 1850s when the New Bern - Hillsborough rail line placed the sleepy little town that would eventually become Cary on a major transportation route. The railroad played a major role in connecting towns in North Carolina and Amtrak still stops 6 times a day in downtown Cary. 4. Animal, not Vegetable or Mineral We felt like we were on the right track (pun intended) with the Railroad idea. Now to find a name that was evocative of trains. One obvious idea was to re-adopt the old Capital Express name that Raleigh used in the A-League. Another idea was to steal the traditional nickname of Crewe Alexandra -- The Railwaymen. Finally, the Carolina Hobos didn't seem like it had much marketing punch (I'm joking about this one). When we couldn't agree on any obvious name, Jonathan espoused the idea that the team name should incorporate an animal of some sort because every kid loves to hug an anthropomorphic mascot. As we begun our quest to tie an animal to the railroad somehow, I hit upon the name of a minor league baseball team in Gary, IN called the SouthShore Railcats. Jonathan, who has close familial ties to the Cincinnati area and is a Miami RedHawks fan, combined the idea of abundance of hawks in the Carolinas with our railroad idea and spit out the name -- Railhawks! 5. Marketable We kind of laughed about the silly, made up name at the time and dismissed it. It wasn't until a bit later when we started thinking about the marketability of the name that we realized we'd stumbled upon a gem. As crude as it may sound, at the end of the day, the franchise must be able to market the entertainment that they are selling to the public. To that end, they need a name that is not only unique in a crowded sports entertainment marketplace, but also one that is evocative of characteristics of the team that they want to promote as well as full of imagery that can provide tie-in opportunities for merchandising. Certainly an allusion to trains brings the ideas of power and speed. The hawk is aggressive and fierce. All of these are qualities that I want to see in my soccer club. Plus the imagery of the railroad opens up all kinds of merchandising options (Railhawks train whistles, conductor caps, etc.) and sound effect ideas (which honestly, I'd wish they'd cut back on, but I know I'm fighting a losing battle there). The icing on the cake for us was when I searched Google for "Railhawks" and turned up exactly ZERO hits. As someone who has been through several tedious and frustrating product naming exercises in my real job, I knew we had truly found a unique identity that the team could brand into their own. That's Our Story, and We're Sticking To It So after about 4 months of deliberation, Jonathan and I settled on Carolina Railhawks as our candidate for the new team's name. Knowing that the management committee which decided the final name might have a similar WTF?-reaction to the name, I made sure I communicated the basis behind our idea -- the ties to the local region, the uniqueness, and the marketability -- as part of my submission into the contest to insure that any subtlety in our brilliance wouldn't be missed! Hopefully that helps folks perplexed by the new name understand the thought process which generated what I believe everyone will agree -- whether you like it or not -- is a unique name. Now the Railhawks need to move to the part the realy matters -- putting a coach and team together that can embody the power, speed, aggressiveness, and fierceness that the Railhawks name is meant to portray. What happens on the field is what really matters. I mean, I would support the Carolina Cockroaches, if they played a beautiful game and won the league championship every year! "

7/20/2006 6:31:08 PM

a Railhawk just sounds like a type of hairstyle...

like a mohawk with a silver tip or a mohawk with horizontal spaces in it to make it look like railroad track...

7/20/2006 6:59:18 PM

I think railhawk is pretty solidly .. gay

7/21/2006 12:14:43 AM

That's the thing about the USL... all the team names suck. Raging Rhinos? Whitecaps? Lynx? Silverbacks? I think RailHawks will fit-in just fine.

7/21/2006 1:04:49 AM

sounds like a wnba team

7/21/2006 1:19:36 AM