Parramatta Eels - Name and Emblem

Name and Emblem

Like most NSWRFL clubs founded before the 1980s, Parramatta was established with no official nickname or mascot. The only nickname Parramatta had ever been known by was the "Fruitpickers", a reference to the orchards spread throughout the District and surrounding suburbs in the first half of the 20th century. As the competition and the clubs themselves became more focused on marketing in the 1970s, Parramatta adopted an official club mascot.

In the mid-1960s, Peter Frilingos, a Sydney rugby league journalist, suggested that the club should be known as the "Eels". This reasoning was based on the name of the Parramatta, anglicised from the Aboriginal dialect "Barramattagal" meaning "place where the Eels dwell". After this, the team was commonly called "The Eels" and it became an official nickname in the late 1970s.

As a result, the club's crest was changed in 1980, to a design featuring an eel. This crest remained, despite several changes in jersey design, until a new eel logo was introduced in 2000. In 2004, the club mascot featured on the crest reverted to an eel drawing similar to that featured on the original crest.

Parramatta has also used two separate crests based on Parramatta City's crest. The first was a highly-detailed scene showing a typical scene on the foreshore of the Parramatta River in the early days of European settlement. It is an apparent tribute to the District's original occupants, the Barramattagal tribe. In the foreground of the original crest, a male Aboriginal is preparing to spear a fish while a woman in a canoe watches. In the background a paddle steamer is visible as well as the tree-lined banks of the Parramatta River. This crest was used by the Club until the 1970s when a more stylised version showing only the hunter, and the club's name on a scroll, was used. This crest is still used in 2006 by the Parramatta District Junior Rugby League Football Club.

In 2009, the Parramatta Eels announced they were returning to their original 1980s club emblem in the 2011 season with the numbers 1947 added, this being the year of conception of the Eels.