Name-a-Day Calendar, June 11: Old Dominion Monarchs
Page 217 of 365
Chosen in: 1961
Chosen by: A faculty committee headed by English professor John Foster West
In 1930, the College of William & Mary established a two-year satellite campus in Norfolk. This campus was officially the Norfolk Division of the College of William & Mary, but usually colloquially referred to simply as “The Division”.
Intercollegiate sports began at The Division pretty much immediately, with records of a men’s basketball team dating all the way back to that same year, 1930. At the time, William & Mary’s teams were called the Indians, so their branch campus played off that identity and called themselves the Braves.
In the post-World War II education boom, The Division quickly blossomed from a two-year William & Mary satellite campus to a four-year school that could stand on its own. By the early 1960s, it became clear that that was what the school was going to do; it would eventually split from William & Mary entirely. In anticipation of this, The Division commissioned a special faculty committee to imagine a new identity for their sports teams. This committee, chaired by English professor John Foster West, announced in August 1961 that they had selected “Monarchs”, a nickname they believed would “link the traditions of the past to the realities of the present”.
Just six months later, on February 16, 1962, the Commonwealth of Virginia passed legislation that made The Division an independent institution. This necessitated a school name change given that The Division was no longer a division of anything. The school board spent six more months mulling it over, reportedly deciding between “College of the Atlantic”, “College of Hampton Roads”, “Old Dominion College”, and “Thomas Jefferson College”. They landed on “Old Dominion”, probably the most fitting school name to fit with the athletic nickname “Monarchs”.
Old Dominion’s lion mascot Big Blue entered the fray in December 1971, when he debuted at a men’s basketball game. The lion has long been a symbol of the English monarchy.
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