Nickname and Mascot History
Due to the school's original designation as a teachers' college, SJSU's mascot changed many times before the school finally adopted the Spartans as the official mascot and nickname in 1925. Mascots and nicknames prior to 1925 included the Daniels, the Teachers, the Pedagogues, the Normals, and the Normalites.
After 1887, the official name of the San Jose campus was the State Normal School at San José. The school's athletic teams initially played under the "Normal" identity, but they gradually shifted to the State Normal School identity, as evidenced by images of the SNS football and basketball squads from this era. Despite the SNS identity, the school continued to be referred to as the California State Normal School, San José in official publications. A recent historical exhibit in the Martin Luther King Library on the San José State campus featured a number of pieces of State Normal School memorabilia, including a SNS pennant.
Read more about this topic: San Jose State Spartans
Famous quotes containing the words nickname and/or history:
“A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. It is a bugbear to the imagination, and, though we do not believe in it, it still haunts our apprehensions.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)
“The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it.”
—Lytton Strachey (1880–1932)