Team names were originally tied to local history, local flora and fauna, and nicknames for the locals.

For example, people from Indiana became nicknamed the Hoosiers.

Then the Hoosiers nickname got picked up as the sports teams’ name for Indiana University Bloomington.

Similarly, (University of Tennessee) Volunteers

And so on and so forth

My favorite of these is the Toledo Mud Hens minor league baseball team.

Then came major pro sports… The pro teams started out as named for local things, but as they discovered national sports broadcasting and marketing, the names became more and more generic to appeal to a wider audiences, so now you get names like Washington Commanders (which is a vast improvement from their long standing insulting name of Redskins, BTW).

Then there are the teams that moved whose names don’t make sense for where they’re located… The Minneapolis Lakers were named after the Great Lakes of that region, then they moved and became the Los Angeles Lakers, which doesn’t make local sense at all.