SB Nation’s Official Invented Lacrosse Name Registry

On Monday, Inside Lacrosse published its annual All-Name Team, and despite what lacrosse’s ambassadors will tell you about the sport’s diversity (“Jim Brown played lacrosse!”), the All-Name Team smacks of prep school privilege. Wellington Stanwick, Murphy Vandervelde, Baxter Lanius IV, Draper Donley: these are all ACTUAL NAMES given to white babies in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s who grew up to play lacrosse for Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Lehigh, and Dickinson (respectively).

What’s in a lacrosse name? Well, a surname for a first name is always a nice start. “Van” serves as a well-moneyed bridge between first and last names. Any name punctuated with a Roman numeral indicates a family with a tradition of business acumen, with the namesake a captain of American industry. Hyphenated surname? WRONG! Power marriage or not, a hyphenated surname indicates dilution of a superior bloodline. And most importantly: NO IRISH OR ITALIAN NAMES! Remember, a good lacrosse name comes from a family that was already wealthy in America when that wave of immigration hit. Lacrosse names are the 1 percent.

Basically, if it sounds like the privileged villain in an ‘80s ski movie, it’s a good lacrosse name. With that in mind, SB Nation presents the official registry of INVENTED LACROSSE NAMES. These people don’t exist, but if they did, they would have popped collars and unruly blond locks, and you would want to punch them.

Brooks van Airesdale

Preston Bottomtooth III

Rutherford B. Hayes

Astor Billingsley

Duke Chesterton

Otto von Bismarck XIV

Brewster Ruegemer

Chip Rapesly

Rockefeller DuPont

Wellesley van den Bruck

Marston Ruxley

Woodford T. Butterfield

Virgil DeWitt IV

J. Carter Steelworthy

Chet Vanderpump