The problem with the "Buzz," the nickname for Salt Lake City's new baseball team, is that it is an "it" as opposed to a "they."
Sports team names should be plural, as in Trappers and Dodgers, not singular as in Buzz and, for another example, Jazz. Referring to Jazz players as Jazzmen sounds strange. Then there's the Miami Heat. Of all the names that could have been chosen for Miami's expansion franchise in the NBA (Parrotheads, for one), they picked the Heat. So what do you call a Miami player? A heater? No. You refer to a member of the Miami Heat as "a member of the Miami Heat." Nothing as simple as a Boston Celtic or a New York Yankee.The grammar for singular nicknames is difficult. When the Heat come to play the Jazz, are they coming or is it coming? Just as confusing, when Dan Roberts, the Jazz announcer, shouts "How 'bout this Jazz!" as he does several thousand times a season, is that grammatically correct or should it be "How 'bout these Jazz?" (as in "How 'bout these Lakers!").
Also, the Buzz has a problem with ambiguity. What exactly is a buzz? A haircut? A high? A loud humming sound? The guy who walked on the moon? A lot of people in Utah will point out that the Buzz is an extension of the state's long association with the honey bee and the old Salt Lake Bees baseball clubs. But a lot of relatively literate triple-A baseball watching people from Omaha to Edmonton will be wondering what exactly is a Buzz, anyway.
Consider the case of Stanford University where a few years ago in the name of political correctness the school changed its nickname from the Braves to the Cardinal. Many people, to this day, think a Cardinal is either a little red bird a la the St. Louis Cardinals or a high official in the Catholic Church. But in reality, the Stanford Cardinal is/are named after . . . a color.
(I should acknowledge that I myself was a Jordan High School Beetdigger, which should establish my personal credentials as knowing a little something about questionable sports names).
Also, if the honeybee theme sticks to the Buzz, is it a verb or a noun? If it's a verb, as in "the bees are buzzing" instead of "there is a buzz in the air from all these bees," Salt Lake could have the first professional sports franchise in history to be named after a verb. The Georgetown Hoyas (What Rocks!) are named after a concept, but otherwise sports teams are pretty much always named after nouns.
The new nickname does follow in the tradition of the state's unfrivolous history of picking names, dating back to such Mormon pioneer names as Big Mountain, Little Mountain, City Creek, This is the Place Monument, and, of course, Salt Lake City.
Consistent with this Big Mountain/Little Mountain mentality, when the Jazz moved from New Orleans they took the path of least resistance and kept their nickname.
It could have been worse. They could have called the baseball team the Deserets, which is an ancient Indian name meaning beehive-type industriousness and was the original choice by local settlers for the name of the Utah Territory that was created in 1849 out of part of Mexico annexed by the United States.
"Deseret" never did stick as the official name, but it did become the name of several local institutions, such as this newspaper, which, as a result, is yet to have its name spelled right at any of the first 27 Super Bowls, and as far as the International Olympic Committee is concerned, is a newspaper from somewhere in France (Des-er-ay News, oui?).
Or, worse yet, they could have named the baseball team by following the local fascination for the art of the blended forename (LaRue, LaVerne, VaNoy, Roydean, etc.). They could have been the JazzBuzz.