What’s In a Name?
January 28, 2022
By Noonefromtampa
Ahead of the Washington Football Team’s name announcement on February 2nd, many fans have been playing detective, trying to discover clues about what the new name could possibly be.
We have seen people dissecting the latest branding video with gusto. On Twitter, extensive debates have gone on over whether the team has been putting out disinformation to try and hide their true intent.
Another avenue people have been tracking is domain registry changes for the Internet. Why this, you may ask. The Internet is controlled by a series of numbers called an IP (Internet Protocol) address that looks something like 192.0.2.1 physically. That is the address where a website lives. But that would very hard for people remember, so the Internet uses domain name system (DNS) which translates a domain name such as thehogsty.com into the actual physical address. DNS is basically a huge phonebook for the Internet with copies stored all over the Internet to help direct people to the right place.
It can take upwards of 48 hours for a change of address to be completed across the Internet. Washington will most likely have to transfer the new domain name for the team to one of the two website service providers used by the NFL prior to next week’s name announcement next week, Network Solutions and MarkMonitor. Intrepid fans have been using the promoted possible names to track any potential domain changes through the group responsible for organizing the changes to the domain address, ICANN.org.
Late Wednesday evening, Commanders.com was transferred to MarkMonitor. This has led to speculation that this is evidence that Commanders will be the new name of the team. Conversely, people have been monitoring the other possible names to look for changes; however, to date, none have been seen.
Of course, this could all be a smokescreen created to divert attention from the real new name (possibly even one not released as a possibility), but that is an attention to a level of detail that the team has not displayed previously in any of many endeavors under the ownership of Dan Snyder.
With a less than a week to go, we now have one solid lead about a possible new name. Whether it is the correct one, only time will tell.