San Francisco 49ers

If you aren’t up to date on your California history, the number 49 might not carry much significance. But there's a reason it's called the Golden State, and that reason is the gold rush that began in 1848 and reached its peak in 1849. The California Gold Rush brought some 300,000 people to the state over the course of seven years, with hopeful prospectors becoming known as forty-niners. Formed nearly a century later in 1946, San Francisco's first major sports team took its name from those prospectors. Seventeen years later, the Philadelphia 76ers followed suit by naming themselves after the year America declared its independence from Great Britain.

But we can't be called the 49'ers in honor of being founded in 1949.