— "What the heck is a RailHawk?"

This question has been asked by Carolina RailHawks fans and foes alike since the club’s inception in 2006. Sometimes the query is sincerely posed; usually it’s a lazy way for opponents to deride a rival or cynics to express snark.

The practice of appropriating animals, objects, and other groups of people for the nicknames of our sports teams is an odd, incongruous exercise. A tiger is a fierce species of cat, or the sports teams representing Clemson University and LSU, and the Major League Baseball team from Detroit. A patriot is a person who vigorously supports their country, or the NFL team near Boston. A timber is wood suitable for construction, or the Major League Soccer team in Portland, Oregon. A Trojan is a player for the University of Southern California, or an inhabitant of ancient Troy, or, well, you get the idea.

The genesis of the RailHawks moniker, the brainchild of Jarrett Campbell and Jonathan Hart, is exactingly chronicled on the website for the Triangle Soccer Fanatics supporters group. It’s a compound noun not found in nature, a misnomer conjured for a specific purpose. Its habitat was the pristine pitch of WakeMed Soccer Park, née SAS Soccer Park, along with the stomping grounds of its adversaries.

This week, RailHawks owner Steve Malik announced that he is renaming the Cary-based soccer club to “North Carolina FC.” The RailHawks are dead—long live the RailHawks.

Reaction to the change is as split as sentiment for the RailHawks name itself. Some rue the demise of a unique, well-established identity, while others welcome the arrival of a more marketable, homogenous brand.

After all, what is a RailHawk?

For 10 seasons, the RailHawks entertained Triangle audiences who discovered that, yes, the area has a professional soccer team nestled in a sylvan corner of Cary. Their peculiar name sounded minor league to many, and, indeed, the club played in the second division of the perennially unsettled American soccer system.

But this “minor league” team, this “misnomer,” hosted clubs from across the United States, as well as Mexico, Central America, Canada and the Caribbean. The RailHawks weren’t “major league,” but they played 10 present or future members of Major League Soccer. Twenty-somethings bearing the badge won three amateur national championships and a friendly against Burnley FC. The pro senior squad advanced to the semifinals of the U.S. Open Cup in the club’s first year of existence, and then the Cup’s quarterfinals twice more after that. They drew West Ham United. They beat the LA Galaxy three years on the trot.

”We’re sick of losing to Carolina,” said Landon Donovan.

RailHawks matches are where many (including this reporter) learned—and learned to love—the sport. The intimacy of the setting contributed to the connection between the fans and the team, all bound by an idiosyncratic sobriquet. As a 15-year-old, Nazmi Albadawi cheered the RailHawks from the supporters’ section; this year, he set a league assist record wearing the RailHawks’ shield. The colors—orange, white, and blue—accompanied Tiyi Shipalane’s stepovers, Amir Lowery’s bone-crunchers, and the standard of “Mr. RailHawk,” Kupono Low.

The affinity fans feel for their sports teams is forged through adversity as much as success. The Carolina RailHawks have no pro championship trophies; there are no oral histories about an epic title run. The RailHawks had more owners than head coaches over its 10-year run, teetering on uncertainty, if not outright extinction at least thrice, only to rise from the ashes like another fictional avian analog. As other lower division pro soccer teams came and went, the RailHawks sustained. In the end, marketing considerations extinguished what eBay liquidation and an international soccer scandal could not.

It’s accurate, even appropriate, to observe that the erstwhile RailHawks soccer club hasn’t gone anywhere. They harbor higher hopes, but for now the field, coaches, players and supporters remain the same. The memories created by North Carolina FC will hopefully mirror, if not exceed the passion and perseverance of its predecessor.

Indeed, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

But identity is more than identification, and care must be taken not to purge the former whilst altering the latter. There’s no estimating how many times over the past decade that broadcast announcer Dean Linke exclaimed, “How ‘bout the Carolina RailHawks?!” While his exhortation was intended and received as a cheer, it’s actually a question. Today, it feels more than rhetorical.

What is a RailHawk? It’s a soccer team. Just a soccer team.