How the Seahawks got their name all those years ago

That begs the question, though, how did the Seahawks name come to be? With the team's 50th season on the horizon, let's take a trip down memory lane.

Seahawks got their name through a public contest

Like many sports franchises, the Seahawks name came from a name-the-team contest held in 1975, the year before they hit the field for the first time. The team received 11,741 different suggestions from 20,365 entries, and 153 people suggested Seahawks.

In 2016, the Seahawks revealed a full list of name suggestions they received all those years ago, and some of those suggestions were... interesting, to put it lightly. Some of them were good and a reference to the culture of the Pacific Northwest - including Bigfoots and Evergreens. However, many of them would've been outright terrible for an actual team - including Green State Geoducks, Puddle Jumpers and Weather Beaters, alongside several others.

While the osprey, which is what "Seahawk" actually refers to, isn't the biggest or most intimidating bird of prey, it does properly capture the speed of football. Not to mention, it helped establish the theme of Seattle team names having some relation to the sea. MLB's Seattle Mariners, who began play just one year after the Seahawks, obviously take their name from the city's marine culture, while the NHL's Seattle Kraken take theirs from the mythical sea monster.

It's a name that has endeared over the years, and will continue to do so going forward.