Wootton was a patriot. Magruder was a colonel. Churchill was referred to as “The British Bulldog.” Whitman? He never even wrote about Vikings, let alone met them.

When it comes to selecting a mascot for a school or professional sports team, most opt for flashy alliteration or name it after something historically or geographically relevant. Almost every MCPS school follows this model: WJ Wildcats, Blair Blazers, B-CC Barons, Magruder Colonels and Wootton Patriots. Why doesn’t Whitman?

To be fair, the Vikings make for a pretty cool mascot; after all, they were a group of Nordic warriors bearing axes and knives. Plus, they would be pretty intimidating on the football field.

But historically, the Vikings were known more for their good hygiene than their ferocity, and they never actually wore horned helmets (you can thank 19th century composer Richard Wagner for that error).

Nevertheless, the mascot is one widely used throughout collegiate and professional sports. The NFL’s Minnesota Vikings are named after them because of the heavy Scandinavian settlement there, but neither Vikings (nor their latter-day descendants) ever quite made their way down to Maryland. The name is therefore pretty ill-suited to grace the front of our teams’ jerseys.

There is an abundance of names that Whitman’s administration could have gone with back in the 1960s. If we had gone the alliteration route, we could have been the Whitman Wizards, the Whitman Wolverines, the Whitman Whales, or the Whitman Warriors, all better alternatives to the Vikings.

Even better, the administration could have gone with something relevant to Whitman himself. The Whitman Leaves of Grass would be a force to be reckoned with. Or, how about the Whitman Fighting Poets? Now that’s a name that would be sure to strike fear into the hearts of its rivals.