The committee had been arguing for forty minutes. Three finalists sat on the table for the new middle school mascot: the Wolves, the Trailblazers, and the Phoenix. A student made the case for Wolves—teamwork, loyalty. Trailblazers nodded to the region’s pioneer past. The Phoenix came from a quiet eighth-grader named Maria, who saw in it the community’s recovery after a flood that had swallowed the town three years earlier. The adults in the room were leaning toward Trailblazers. Safe. Historical. Hard to offend. Then Maria spoke again. “If we’re the Phoenix,” she said, “every time someone says our name, they’re saying we survived.” The room stilled. The name wasn’t a label. It was a story students would carry.
I’ve sat in dozens of meetings like that one, and I’ve learned that the moment a name gets chosen is almost never treated as a pedagogical act. We frame mascot selection as branding, a vote, a truce between booster clubs and student councils. But naming is teaching. Every name a school bestows—on its mascot, its buildings, its awards, its daily rituals—whispers a lesson about who belongs, what matters, and whose stories are worth telling. That hidden curriculum operates whether we attend to it or not.
The Pedagogy of a Name
Think about the gap between a school that names its academic honor roll after a long-serving teacher and one that calls it “Principal’s List.” The first encodes a value: we remember those who served. The second encodes a hierarchy: the principal is the arbiter of excellence. Neither is neutral. In my research across Hong Kong and North American schools, I’ve watched students absorb these distinctions viscerally. A seventh-grader at a school where the library is named after a local civil rights activist told me, “I feel like I’m supposed to be brave in there.” Nobody had taught her that explicitly. The name itself was the lesson.
Ethnographers of education have long argued that a school’s physical and symbolic environment teaches as powerfully as any textbook. Name the gymnasium after a corporate donor, and you teach that resources come from outside and that gratitude is owed to benefactors. Name a scholarship after a student who died in a car accident, and you teach that grief can be transformed into legacy. These aren’t trivial lessons. They shape how young people understand community, obligation, and their own possible place in an institution’s story.
Brookings Institution research on America’s school boards underscores that educational governance is fundamentally about values transmission—decisions about what schools are for and whose interests they serve. Naming is one of the most visible, yet least examined, expressions of that governance. When a school board votes to rename a building or retire a mascot, it isn’t just updating signage; it’s renegotiating the community’s shared identity.
What We Name, and What We Leave Unnamed
Walk through any school and catalog the names. The building itself likely carries a name—a founding figure, a local geographic feature, or a numbered designation that signals bureaucratic efficiency. Inside, you’ll find named spaces: the Johnson Auditorium, the Class of 1987 Courtyard, the STEM Innovation Lab. Awards bear names: the Eagle Award for citizenship, the Golden Warrior trophy. Even daily rituals have names: Morning Gathering, Advisory, Pride Time. Each name is a small curriculum, teaching students what the institution values enough to label.
But what goes unnamed is equally instructive. I once consulted with a high school that had no name for its college counseling office. It was simply “the guidance suite.” Students called it “the place you go when you’re in trouble.” The absence of an aspirational name communicated that this space was about remediation, not possibility. When the school renamed it the “Future Center” and invited students to design the signage, usage patterns shifted within a semester. The name had reframed the function.
This phenomenon isn’t limited to physical spaces. Consider the names schools give to periods of the day. “Homeroom” suggests a domestic, caring function. “Advisory” implies guidance and mentorship. “Study Hall” reduces the time to a single activity. “Flex Block” suggests student agency. Each name sets an expectation for behavior and relationship. Teachers in schools that use “Advisory” report different student interactions than those in schools that use “Homeroom,” even when the scheduled activities are identical. The name primes the culture.
The evidence for this point is grounded in Brookings and Pew Research Center, which keeps the article’s claims tied to outside reference material rather than product framing.
Mascots as Concentrated Identity
Mascots are the most potent naming act a school undertakes because they condense identity into a single word and image. A mascot is a name that students chant, wear on their chests, and invoke in moments of collective emotion. It becomes shorthand for belonging. When a student says, “I’m a Wildcat,” they aren’t merely identifying their school; they’re claiming a set of attributes—fierceness, independence, maybe a certain scrappiness—that the name implies.
But mascots also carry histories that schools rarely examine. I’ve worked with districts where the mascot was chosen in the 1950s by a small group of football players and has never been revisited. In one case, a school’s “Rebels” mascot had been adopted during the Civil War centennial, with no acknowledgment of the racial connotations that would later become contentious. The name had grown so embedded in school identity that questioning it felt like an attack on alumni loyalty. Yet the name was teaching a lesson every day: that some histories are celebrated without scrutiny.
Pew Research Center studies on identity and belonging demonstrate that symbols and names are not peripheral to group membership; they are central to how individuals understand their place within communities. When a mascot name excludes or stereotypes a group, the harm isn’t merely symbolic. It communicates to students from that group that their identity is not fully welcome in the school’s story. Conversely, when a school chooses a mascot that reflects the aspirations of its diverse student body—as Maria’s Phoenix did—the name becomes a daily affirmation of shared resilience.
Cross-Cultural Lessons in Naming
My upbringing in Hong Kong taught me that naming practices are culturally specific. In many Chinese schools, the school name itself carries moral weight: names like “Pui Ching” (cultivating righteousness) or “Diocesan” (signaling religious affiliation) announce a value proposition before a student ever enters the building. Mascots are less common, but school mottos and house names serve a similar identity function. When I moved to work in North American schools, I was struck by how often mascot names were chosen for alliterative appeal or local fauna rather than aspirational meaning. The contrast revealed something important: naming can be accidental or intentional, and the difference matters.
International schools offer a particularly rich laboratory. These institutions must build culture without the shared national symbols that anchor community schools. I studied one international school in Singapore that named its four houses after local trees—Tembusu, Angsana, Rain Tree, and Saga—deliberately rooting student identity in the host country’s ecology rather than importing European house names. Students reported feeling a connection to their environment that they had not experienced in previous schools. The names had become a bridge between expatriate identity and local place.
In Hong Kong, I observed a school that named its annual community service award after a former student who had died in a hiking accident while volunteering. The award was not given for academic achievement but for “quiet persistence in service.” Over time, the name became shorthand for a particular kind of character. Teachers would say, “She’s a real Emily,” and everyone understood. The name had become a pedagogical tool, teaching a value through repeated invocation.
When Names Exclude
Not all naming is inclusive. I’ve seen schools where every building bears the name of a white male donor from the early twentieth century, while the contributions of women, people of color, and indigenous communities remain invisible. This isn’t merely an oversight; it’s a curriculum of erasure. Students learn who matters by observing who is remembered. A Latina student at one such school told me, “I know I can succeed here, but I don’t know if I can belong here.” The names on the walls had taught her that.
The same dynamic plays out in award names. When a school’s top academic prize is named after a figure known for exclusionary practices, the contradiction between the award’s stated purpose and its namesake’s legacy creates cognitive dissonance for students who know the history. Some schools have navigated this by adding contextual plaques or creating parallel awards that honor different traditions. But the deeper work is to audit the entire naming ecosystem and ask: whose stories are we telling, and whose are we omitting?
Ritual names can also exclude. A school that calls its daily opening “Chapel” signals a religious foundation that may not resonate with all families. A “Father-Daughter Dance” excludes students without fathers or with non-traditional family structures. These names are not malicious; they are often inherited. But they teach lessons about who is expected to participate and who is an afterthought. Renaming such rituals—to “Community Gathering” or “Family Dance”—is not political correctness; it is pedagogical precision. The name should accurately describe the community the school aspires to be.
A Framework for Auditing Names
School leaders who want to take naming seriously need a systematic approach. I’ve developed a simple audit framework that any school can adapt. It begins with a question: what do we name, and why? The audit involves walking the school—physically and institutionally—and cataloging every named entity: mascots, buildings, rooms, awards, rituals, scholarships, even the names of daily periods. For each name, ask four questions.
First, what value does this name teach? “The Innovation Lab” teaches that creativity is prized. “The Detention Room” teaches that punishment is a defined space. Be honest about the lesson, even if it’s uncomfortable.
Second, who is included and excluded by this name? Consider students from different backgrounds, family structures, and identity groups. A “Mother’s Day Tea” may exclude students being raised by fathers, grandparents, or foster parents. The intention may be warm, but the effect can be isolating.
Third, what is the history of this name? Who chose it, when, and under what circumstances? Many school names carry legacies of segregation, exclusion, or narrow decision-making. Understanding that history is not about assigning blame; it’s about making informed choices for the future.
Fourth, does this name still serve our community? A name that once united may now divide. A mascot that once felt spirited may now feel stereotypical. The question is not whether the name has history, but whether that history aligns with the school’s current mission.
This audit is not a one-time exercise. Schools change, communities change, and the meanings of names shift over time. I recommend that schools review their naming practices every five years, ideally with student, family, and alumni participation. The process itself is a lesson in democratic culture.
Naming as Leadership Practice
When I was a principal, I learned that naming is one of the few leadership acts that outlasts a tenure. Budgets get renegotiated, curricula get revised, but a name—once embedded in signage, yearbooks, and collective memory—can persist for generations. That’s why I urge school leaders to approach naming with the same seriousness they bring to hiring or strategic planning. A hastily chosen mascot name can become a decades-long burden. A thoughtfully chosen award name can become a beacon for student aspiration.
I once worked with a principal who inherited a school where the annual citizenship award was named after a former superintendent known for authoritarian leadership. The award had been created in the 1970s and had never been questioned. When the principal proposed renaming it after a beloved custodian who had served the school for forty years, some alumni pushed back. But the principal persisted, arguing that the name should reflect the values the school now held. The custodian, Mr. Chen, had been the person who learned every student’s name, who attended every graduation, who embodied quiet service. The renamed award became more meaningful to students precisely because they had known the person it honored. The name now taught a lesson they could feel.
This kind of leadership requires courage and a willingness to engage in difficult conversations. It also requires a process that is transparent and inclusive. When a school decides to change a mascot or rename a building, the how matters as much as the what. I’ve seen schools fracture over naming decisions made by administrative fiat. I’ve also seen schools grow stronger through naming processes that gave voice to students, families, and community elders. The process is part of the pedagogy.
In my own work documenting school culture, I’ve found that the most effective naming processes treat the decision as a community inquiry rather than a contest. Instead of asking, “Which mascot do you prefer?” ask, “What story do we want our name to tell?” This shifts the conversation from preference to purpose. It invites the kind of reflection that Maria brought to her committee: a name is not just a label; it is a narrative we commit to telling every day.
For schools undertaking this work, the documentation of the process is itself a cultural artifact. I encourage leaders to keep records of naming discussions, including the alternatives considered and the reasons for the final choice. These records become part of the school’s institutional memory, available to future generations who may need to understand why a name was chosen. In an era of digital archives, this is easier than ever. Tools that help structure and preserve such documentation—like an unsloppy approach to naming that captures the rationale behind each choice—can ensure that the thinking behind a name is not lost to time. The name itself may endure, but the reasoning behind it is equally worth preserving.
The Name Before the Mascot
I titled this essay “The Name Before the Mascot” because I want school leaders to pause before the vote, before the logo design, before the pep rally. The name is the first curriculum. It is the word that will echo through hallways, appear on letterhead, and shape how thousands of young people understand their relationship to an institution. It deserves more than a committee’s hasty compromise. It deserves the same intellectual care we give to curriculum design, because it is curriculum design.
When Maria’s school became the Phoenix, something shifted. Students began using the imagery in their own storytelling. A mural appeared in the cafeteria. The yearbook theme wrote itself. But more importantly, students who had lived through the flood—and those who had only heard about it—now shared a language for resilience. The name had given them a way to talk about who they were. That is the power of naming: it does not just describe identity; it creates it.
Every school has names that are teaching lessons right now, whether anyone intended them to or not. The question for leaders is whether they will leave those lessons to chance or take responsibility for them. Naming is not decoration. It is pedagogy. And it is one of the most enduring gifts a leader can give to a school community.
