Commentary: What's in a mascot name, anyway?

By Doug Spoon, Editor

What’s in a name?

We name people, places and things for various reasons. You may name your child a “typical” or familiar first name. Instead, you might name him Evian or Tesla, or her Maybelline. That’s your right.

How were our last names originally determined? Often, surnames are derived from our ancestors’ location or occupation. A few years ago, I learned that the Spoon name was originally Loffel (German for Spoon), and there are indications my five-times great grandfather in Germany was a baker and perhaps even a maker of Spoons.

So what happens when it’s time to name a new school in a district, as Perris Union High School District officials recently had to do? District officials could’ve named the school after a person (D.W. Spoon High?). They could’ve named it after the city it will serve. Instead, a naming committee convinced the school board to go with a patriotic theme – Liberty High School.

OK, so there still is no Menifee High School. That’s for another discussion. Now how about the selection of the school mascot?

Liberty High School athletes can’t be called Patriots. As we all know, that one is taken. They could’ve held a school naming contest or waited for the first incoming class to vote on a mascot name. Admittedly, that doesn’t always work well.

I had a friend who attended the first year of Schurr High School, a Montebello school named after former school board member George Miller Schurr. According to my friend, they took a vote of the students to select a mascot. Eventually, however, district officials vetoed the students’ selection – the Things.

C’mon, district folks. The Schurr Things! How creative is that? Certainly more so than Spartans, the mascot eventually chosen. “Our school always wins; we’re the Schurr Things.” Nice try, anyway.

Faced with the opportunity to select the Liberty High School mascot, the PUHSD naming committee chose a rough and tough animal – the bison. Who would not expect a bison to defeat a Wildcat or a Patriot on the field of battle? Either one would get trampled. In the end, however, the official explanation was that a bison is “a symbol of patriotism” that was named the National Mammal of the United States.

Okie dokie. But that selection did open up another debate: Will a group of Liberty High athletes be referred to the Bison or the Bisons?

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the plural of bison is bison. This was quickly pointed out to me when I referred to Liberty High athletes as bisons in our original news article on the subject. I pointed out at the time that other schools with that mascot have the word Bisons across their uniforms. The general feeling is that a mascot that can be referred to in the plural sense is more suitable for a school that is represented by a number of students and/or athletes.

So do we need an official ruling here? Or do we get to decide for ourselves? If I cover a Liberty High School sports event and write that “the Bisons scored a touchdown,” will I be put in grammar jail?

Granted, it would be awkward to refer to a group of athletes from a school with a deer mascot as “the deers.” Maybe that’s why there are so few of them (or any?) in the mascot world. But how often do we say or write the word bison or buffalo?

Maybe they should let the students vote on it. But we’ve already seen how that can go.