An old customer recently told me that this was the perfect name for a football franchise (at least in USA and Texas). Before he finished the sentence I knew he was right, and only in part because of the name's applicability itself.

Finding a good, strong, simple name that is immediately identifiable with your locale is an achievement in itself. Finding one that instantly repositions all the marketing of football in your state, especially when the big incumbent is one of the biggest sports brands in the world, is shear magic.

From a fluency point of view (the real key to good naming), this name only scores a 9, as Houston Texans does not quite roll off the tongue as smoothly as we would like. On the other hand, it scores a 11+ for marketing so we averaged it out to 10 (out of 10)!

In another interesting sideline, they have not registered the name as a trademark for a sports team. Probably not needed of course since no one can use the name for a football franchise - and the common law rights are so strong. However, the name is a registered trademark for clothing, toys, etc. so that they can properly control the big merchandising market that results from all good teams.

Shown here is the simple logo they use, though in reality their franchise identity is much more than this. In fact, the logo does not appear all the time. Often they simply use the name in a typical rodeo/cowboy font. This is surely one name that made the life of the graphics designers and marketeers a lot easier. All they had to do was capitalize on all things Texas.. which also means big and bold.

See them online at HoustonTexans.com.