From time to time, people will tell me that Wizards is a pretty corny name for a franchise, but it could have been worse.
Much, much worse.
According to an ESPN.com article from a few years back, during the Washington's name change saga a few interesting choices made the next-to-final cut:
In the spring of '97, more than 2,000 nickname suggestions were gathered from fan submissions and narrowed down to five choices: The Dragons, The Express, The Stallions, The Sea Dogs, and The Wizards. Of course, these names all brought their own negative connotations. After all, you don't want a name like Dragons to encourage D.C. hooligans to put down their handguns only to start running about breathing flame, torching villages, and devouring serfs. And the English sea dogs of the 16th century, most famously Sir Francis Drake, were arguably just vicious pirates given the royal blessing to harass, capture, and plunder Spanish ships.
While none of those names were very good, at least Abe didn't incorporate his own name into the nickname, unlike someone else.