Name-a-Day Calendar, December 22: Charleston Southern Buccaneers
Page 46 of 365
Chosen in: 1965
Chosen by: Students at the school’s first basketball game
Cleverly hidden in the name of Charleston Southern University is its religious affiliation: it’s a Southern Baptist school. It was established with a more obvious name — Baptist College of Charleston — in 1964, beginning athletic competition the following year.
The school’s first administrators wanted its athletic identity to match its religious affiliation, evidently suggesting the sports teams be called the Christians or the Crusaders. The students, on the other hand, wanted something with more pizzazz.
At the school’s first basketball game, several students arrived in full pirate gear: bandanas, eye patches, the whole nine nautical yards. They also brought signs that proclaimed their preferred nickname: the Buccaneers. And, well, who was gonna tell them no? They had swords!
The name was alliterative at the time — Baptist Buccaneers — but clearly that’s no longer the case. By the time the school renamed itself Charleston Southern in 1990, the Buccaneer was so ingrained into school culture that there was no serious discussion of replacing it.
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