Cleveland Indians Announce New Team Name

The Cleveland Indians have a new team name. On Friday morning, the team announced it will be changing its name from the Cleveland Indians to the Cleveland Guardians. The name will officially go into effect when the 2021 season comes to an end.

Back in December, the team announced it was beginning a search for a new name. Last summer, Cleveland announced it would have conversations with Native American groups about a name change. The team met with fans and community leaders about the name changes, which led to a list of 1,200 potential names, according to FOX 8 in Cleveland.

“We are committed to making a positive impact in our community and embrace our responsibility to advance social justice and equality,” the team stated in July 2020. “Our organization fully recognizes our team name is among the most visible ways in which we connect with the community. We have had ongoing discussions organizationally on these issues. The recent social unrest in our community and our country has only underscored the need for us to keep improving as an organization on issues of social justice.”

In December, team owner Paul Dolan said the Indians’ name would be with the team throughout the 2021 season. We’ll be the Indians in 2021 and then after that, it’s a difficult and complex process to identify a new name and do all the things you do around activating that name,” Dolan said. “We are going to work at as quick a pace as we can while doing it right. But we’re not going to do something just for the sake of doing it. We’re going to take the time we need to do it right.”

The name Guardians has ties to Cleveland as it’s a nod to the sculptures on Hope Memorial Bridge called the “Guardians of Traffic.” Another name the was being considered was the Spiders which is what the team called itself in the 1890s. The process from stop being called the Indians started in 2018 when the team stopped wearing the Chief Wahoo logo on their jersey and caps.