“One legacy. One unified future. We are the Washington Commanders,” the Washington, D.C.-based professional football team declared via Twitter on Wednesday, after two years of speculation over their new name and appearance.
After receiving years of complaints about its offensive overtones toward Native Americans, the team decided to drop its previous name in July 2020.
“We said on July 3rd that a comprehensive examination of the team’s name would begin… On July 3, 2020, the team released a statement saying, “Today, we are announcing we will be retiring the Redskins name and logo upon completion of this review.”
Two weeks later, the squad officially adopted the “Washington Football Team” moniker, even though it was only intended to last through the 2020–21 campaign. While it worked on a new name and resolved issues with copyrights, the squad elected to stick with the name for another season.
The Washington co-CEO Tanya Snyder, the wife of owner Daniel Snyder, revealed to ESPN in September that Armada, Brigade, Commanders, Defenders, Presidents, Redhawks, RedWolves, and the existing football team were the final eight contenders.
RedWolves, one of the most well-known names on social media, will not, however, be the team name due to copyright issues, as team President Jason Wright announced last month in a post on the team’s website. “Early on we understood Wolves — or some variation of it — was one of our fan favorites,” Wright wrote. “As I’ve said all along, we take feedback from our fans seriously, and because of your interest in this name, we put Wolves on a list of options to explore fully. Once we began looking into Wolves, however, we became aware of a notable challenge: trademarks held by other teams would limit our ability to make the name our own. And without Wolves, variations like RedWolves wouldn’t have been viable either.”
