Convenience Big Store: How Houston’s sports teams got their names

How Houston's sports teams got their names

January 7, 2025

From left, Houston Colt .45s outfielder John Weekly, pitcher Bobby Tiefenauer and third baseman Bob Aspromonte after a game against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Colt Stadium in May 1962.

From the Astros to the Dynamo, here's how Houston's professional sports teams got their names

Houston has enjoyed a long, rich history in the realm of professional sports, dating back to the 1880s when the Buffaloes, named after Buffalo Bayou, took the field as the city's first minor-league baseball team.

With its brand as an industrial powerhouse and the largest city in Texas, Houston has lent its identity to dozens of pro sports teams throughout the years. Not many have stuck around (I'm looking at you, Oilers), but the city still boasts five major professional sports teams: the Astros, Texans, Rockets, Dynamo and Dash.

So, how did these teams get their names in the first place?

What inspired the names of Houston's pro sports teams?

Let's start with the city's most successful team in recent memory, our beloved Astros.

When the team began playing in 1962, after buying the Buffaloes and relocating them to Oklahoma, they were initially called the Colt .45s as a nod to Texas' gunslinger heritage. However, in 1965, as the Space City embraced its role as the home of NASA's Johnson Space Center, and after the Astrodome was built, the team rebranded itself as the Astros.

Houston's other space-themed team name, meanwhile, was a coincidence.

The NBA's San Diego Rockets began playing in Southern California in the late '60s, with the team name inspired by the local arms industry. (Did you know the country's first intercontinental ballistic missile was developed there?)

The team kept the name when it relocated to Houston in 1971, the moniker fitting in perfectly with the city's aerospace connections.

In Major League Soccer, the Houston Dynamo got its name after its original identity caused some controversy. The team, formerly the San Jose Earthquakes, chose Houston 1836 when it moved to Houston in 2005. The name paid homage to the year of Houston's founding, and the club's original logo featured a silhouette of the Sam Houston statue in Hermann Park. Following backlash over the name's historical connotation (the Texas Revolution was also fought in 1836, a year team name protestors said should not be honored), the club was renamed the Dynamo after the short-lived Houston Dynamos of the United Soccer League.

The stories behind the names of Houston's other two surviving major pro sports teams aren't as interesting.

The National Women's Soccer League awarded the Dynamo ownership group an expansion team in 2013 and gave it a name that also starts with a D and the same team colors as its MLS counterpart.

Meanwhile, the Texans, the city's NFL team established after the Oilers fled to Tennessee, were given the most generic name a team from Texas can have. But I think Houstonians were just happy to have pro football back.

What about the defunct teams?

You may have noticed a few major leagues were missing in Houston's repertoire of sports teams: the Women's National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League.

But that doesn't mean these sports don't have histories in Houston.

The Houston Comets were established as one of the original WNBA teams in 1997 and became its first dynasty, winning four straight championships from its inaugural season to 2000. They got their name from Houston's space industry, and it became synonymous with dominance in the WNBA's early years before the team folded in 2008.

In the hockey minor leagues, the Houston Aeros, which existed from 1994 to 2003, got their name from the original Aeros of the World Hockey Association.

That Houston team, from the '70s, got its name as a nod to the aerospace industry in Ohio because it was originally going to be based in Dayton, the homeplace of the Wright brothers, the inventors of manned flight.

There has been a push in recent years to bring professional women's basketball and hockey back to Houston, but for now, these teams — and their wacky names — live in the record books.