The AFL’s 18th team, the Greater Western Sydney franchise, is looking for a name. They’ve put a few suggestions forward, like Giants, Wolves and Rangers, and have asked the public for its input.

In this day and age, it’s certainly not easy to name a sports team. Most of the good, solid names – Lions, Tigers, Bears – are taken. And the pressure is on from bean counters and marketing mavens to go with something unique and creative and more importantly, something that will sell merchandise.

Give the GWS people credit, because so far, they haven’t succumbed to the recent trend of getting uber creative: just look at the A-League’s latest additions, where one team is named after an emotion – North Queensland Fury – and the other an organ – Melbourne Heart.

Australian sport usually takes its cues from the USA, so here are some highlights from the last fifteen years of American sports nicknames.

2010 – Philadelphia becomes Major League Soccer’s 16th franchise. The club takes a page out of the history books and calls itself the Union as a tribute to the city’s role in the formation of the 13 original colonies into a unified country.

2008 – The Seattle Sonics move to Oklahoma City and become the Thunder. The only good thing about the move is that the old name doesn’t come along, a la the Utah Jazz, which might be the most preposterous name in the world. Jazz, an indigenous, multicultural form of music from one of the world’s great melting pots of a city. Utah, the whitest state in the USA, where you have to belong to a private club to get a drink of whiskey.

2005 – Baseball’s Montreal Expos move to Washington and become the Nationals, putting an end to the old Pee Wee Herman joke (the punchline was “the Expos and the Yankees.”)

2005 – In a decision that’s the epitome of putting lipstick on a pig, Salt Lake City’s MLS team dubs itself Real Salt Lake. No truth to the rumour it narrowly beat out Borussia Salt Lake.

2003 – The Charlotte Bobcats are the NBA’s newest expansion team. While “cat” names are pretty traditional, some suggest that the “Bob” part of the nickname is in honour of owner Robert “Bob” Johnson.

2002 – The NFL’s ego driven Houston franchise decides to call itself the Texans, and eclipses Browns as the most boring nickname in sports.

2000 – The NHL’s Columbus and Minnesota teams come up with two of the worst nicknames in sport. Columbus goes with Blue Jackets, a tribute to the Civil War’s Union Army, which wore – yep – blue jackets. Minnesota opts for the vague, amorphous Wild.

1999 – Atlanta calls its NHL team the Thrashers, named after the Georgia state bird and not punk kids who like Minor Threat.

1998 – The NHL’s Nashville Predators are not named for the Schwarzenegger film, but after a fossil found buried beneath the city. And no that’s not a dead country-and-western singer joke.

1998 – Baseball franchises in Arizona and Tampa Bay pick names of animals native to their respective regions. Arizona goes with Diamondbacks, a venomous rattlesnake. Tampa Bay chooses Devil Rays, after a large sea creature. The Devil has been dropped in recent years and the team is now simply called the Rays.

1996 – The NFL’s Cleveland Browns move to Baltimore and, in an inspired tribute to favourite son Edgar Allen Poe, call themselves the Ravens.

1995 – Jacksonville and Carolina enter the NFL together. Both pick big cats (Jaguars, Panthers) and both use stylized felines on their helmets.

1995 – The NBA’s Toronto Raptors start the whole “let’s market to the kids” naming process by riding the Jurassic Park wave. This nickname looks pretty silly 15 years on. Perhaps the marketing types at GWS have taken note.