Of Anaheim No More, Los Angeles Angels Officially Changed Name

File this one under the “it happened and nobody really noticed” column.

The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, still the butt of jokes on social media and elsewhere due to their clumsy name, have officially changed their name to just “Los Angeles Angels”, finally dropping the “of Anaheim” part.

Very much worth noting that this actually happened *prior* to the 2016 season. No announcement was made publicly by the team, just a note accompanying their team stylesheet. They’ve officially been known as the Los Angeles Angels now for a year-and-a-half.

An example of the Angels name change on an MLB stylesheet. The 2013 version above, 2017 below.

The Angels got the green light to remove “of Anaheim” from their name following a new lease deal with the city back in September 2013. Despite this the team continued to officially use the long name throughout the 2014 and 2015 seasons.

Regardless of the actual name of the team, the Angels have rarely used their full name anywhere since they made the locale change to “Los Angeles” from “Anaheim” in 2005. Baseball cards simply refer to the team as the “Angels” while merchandise which would normally include a city and team name reads “Angels Baseball”.

The name without “of Anaheim” can be seen in the header on their official website and the bio section of their Twitter account:

This marks the fifth name in the history of the Angels franchise, and the first time they’ve reused a previous one. Since their inaugural season in 1961, the Angels have been known as the Los Angeles Angels (1961-64), California Angels (1965-96), Anaheim Angels (1997-2004), Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (2005-15), and now again, Los Angeles Angels (2016-).

The MLB section of our site will be updated shortly to reflect this new information, this is almost literally the only change you’ll really see because of this news.