The New England Patriots’ Name Has a Surprisingly Complicated Origin

The New England Patriots are returning to the Super Bowl for another chance to win it all, along with their iconic team name.

Most teams in the NFL are named after a city, like the Seattle Seahawks, or a state, like the Tennessee Titans. So why do the Patriots represent a whole region? And just how did they become the “Patriots?”

Where “Patriots” Came From

In 1959, a Boston businessman named Billy Sullivan Jr. became the owner of a new team in the American Football League (AFL) and had to pick a name.

Sullivan, who had a background in sports promotion, decided to have a contest to determine the name and got help from local sports writers to narrow down the list. The writers chose the “Patriots,” which was suggested by around 70 fans and harkens back to Boston's history during the Revolutionary War and the colonists who fought against the British in order to gain American freedom.

The team also had other Patriot-related suggestions among the contest suggestions, with names like the Colonials and Minutemen, and other rejected choices including the Beantowners and Bulls.

From Boston to New England

The team played its first game in 1960 as the Boston Patriots, not the New England Patriots that fans know it by now.

The name reflected the city the team was based in, as well as where they played—and they played everywhere in Boston. In the Boston Patriots' first decade, fans could watch them play at football fields for Boston University and Harvard. They also spent several years playing in the legendary Fenway Park, which is still home to the Boston Red Sox baseball team.

But there were two major changes to football in the early 1970s. First, the NFL merged with the AFL, which included the Boston Patriots, and began to play with 26 teams in the merged league.

With the league changes also came a big change for the Boston Patriots when the team moved into its new permanent stadium, but it wasn't in Boston. Instead, the team had chosen a site in Foxborough, Massachusetts, to build a new stadium in a city that's about halfway between Boston and Providence, Rhode Island.

The new location for the Patriots and the team's desire to appeal to a bigger audience led them to open the new stadium with a new name: the New England Patriots.

Today, the Patriots still play in Foxborough at the Gillette Stadium, which opened in 2002.