Mental Floss has a list up detailing the origins of all 30 NHL team names. You've got to love the story behind the Pittsburgh Penguins:
"The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sponsored a name-the-team contest, but Carol McGregor, the wife of one of the franchise’s part owners, Jack McGregor, was the one responsible for the nickname. In his book, Pittsburgh Penguins: The Official History of the First 30 Years, Bob Grove describes how Carol McGregor came up with the name. “I was thinking of something with a P. And I said to Jack, ‘What do they call the Civic Arena?’ And he said, ‘The Big Igloo.’ So I thought, ice... Pittsburgh... Penguins.” More than 700 of the 26,000 contest entries were for Penguins."
Now all I need is someone to explain the stories behind some of West Africa's soccer teams. The Ghanaian Premier League includes teams like Hearts of Oak and the brilliantly-named Eleven Wise, while Nigeria's Premier League includes teams like Kano Pillars, Ranchers Bees and the famous Wikki Tourists.
Makes English football pioneer Sheffield Wednesday (so named because that's the day they used to play cricket) sound boring by comparison.