How did New Zealand Rugby clubs get their names?

We find out the origins of New Zealand’s Super Rugby Aotearoa teams

With the Super Rugby Aotearoa season in New Zealand about to get under way, we thought it would be great to get to know the teams a bit better - starting with how they got their names!

Highlanders

The Otago and Southland regions (where the Highlanders are based) were predominantly settled by immigrants of Scottish origin. Dunedin (Gaelic for Edinburgh) is the main city and has many street names, architecture and statues that are Scottish in origin.

Crusaders

Originally the Canterbury Crusaders, the name was chosen in part because of the English heritage of many of the settlers in Christchurch and partly because it was catchy. The team choosing the name did not do their due diligence in working out just what crusaders were, but liked the fact that they could have a sword wielding knight prance around before their games. In recent years (since the terrorism in Christchurch) there has been a push to rebrand and rename them. They resisted calls to rename but instead changed their logo.

Hurricanes

Based in Wellington, which is known as the 'Windy City'. Hurricanes are fairly windy, so this one is sort of self explanatory.

Chiefs

The logo of the Chiefs is a Maori Chief holding a Kotiate (a short club). The catchment zone (both historically and currently) are regions with strong Maori representation and probably have higher proportions of Maori than other NZ regions (except probably the Eastern cape region that falls under the Hurricanes catchment). One of the provinces is King County which refers to the Maori King movement from the New Zealand Wars in the 1860s.

Blues

Originally the Auckland Blues, most people think that they were named after the colours of their two largest provincial sides, Auckland and Northland. But this is inaccurate as Northland was originally part of the Chiefs, as the northern part of NZ was very strong in the mid-90s, so the area was divided up. The Blues are also thought to be named after the dominant feature of the region (water).

via reddit