Chinese Basketball Association - Team Names

Team Names

For a full list of teams, see Category:Chinese Basketball Association teams.

The full name of each team usually consists of three parts, in the following order:

1. A geographic designation (except in the case of the Bayi or "August First" team). Currently all of these are province-level designations (either a province or a Chinese municipality).
2. A corporate sponsor name; this sponsor may change from year to year or perhaps even in mid-season.
3. A nickname, such as the name of an animal. This rarely changes.

This can sometimes lead to confusion about what name to use in English because many variants may be seen. Team names are usually abbreviated (in Chinese or English), so that either the corporate sponsor name or the nickname is used interchangeably (rarely both). Also, the nickname can sometimes be translated into English in more than one way; also the corporate sponsor name can change frequently over time.

Changes in nickname are rare, but occasionally happen, as when the Shandong team changed their nickname from the "Flaming Bulls" to the "Lions".

In previous years, the title of the league itself was available for corporate naming sponsorship. In 1999–2000 and 2000–2001 it was known as the "Hilton League", in 2001–2002 and 2002–2003 it was the "Motorola League", and in 2003–2004 it was sponsored by China Unicom. However, this corporate league title was not always used in the news media, and this sponsorship practice was discontinued at the start of the 2004–2005 season.