As the dust of the IPL player auction settles (and the team owners wonder if they overpaid) everyone is now getting down to business. And the first order of business is wondering what to call themselves. Some folks like Vijay Mallya bought the teams with the understanding that they will be using them for advertising purposes, lost no time in naming the teams. The Bangalore team is called “The Bangalore Royal Challengers” after United Breweries booze brand “Royal Challenge”.

A couple of other teams have also named themselves. The Chennai team, in keeping with their larger-than-life image, have called themselves the “Chennai Super Kings“. The Delhi team has come up with a name, the “Delhi DareDevils“. The other folks are wondering how to top each other now, with Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Mohali and Mumbai still to decide their names.

“Does the name matter” is more of a philosophical discussion. On one side of the camp are psychologist-types who say that the name will make-or-break the team. It is a matter of personal pride and reflection what you call yourself, your identity. Your sense of self-esteem, apparently, also comes from what you are called.

You’ll be surprised how seriously some folks take this name business. The authors of Freakonomics, the runaway hit, recently published on their blog a theory that names that start with a emphasized first syllable have performed a magnitude of order better than their peers. The YANK-ees, The PA-triots seem to permeate a sense of strength, just with their name.

There are also the legions of numerologists and name-vastuu folks who claim that the spelling of your name is also super-important. You just have to watch the names of the endless K-soaps to see how seriously Bollywood takes this.

On the other hand, folks say that it is the team that makes the name, not the name that makes the team. Focusing of trivial matters like these distracts from the real sport, and is a wasted exercise.

The debates between the two camps are endless, (and passionate), but I have a different opinion. The name matters, for things like merchandising. The logo has to be prominent enough to fit across a T-shirt, the color combination has to go well under floodlights (no florescent colors) The name has to be of the right aspect ration to fit on billboards across the city.

The name itself shouldn’t matter much - Unless, of course, you call yourselves “The Idiots”