Origins of Blue Devil Nickname Traced to 1941

It perplexed the founding curator of the Huntington School Heritage Museum for many years. Jack Abrams always wondered about the origin of the nickname “Blue Devils” and how it came to be associated with Huntington High School’s athletic program.

“We carefully went through each of our annual yearbooks, looking for the first printed reference to Huntington High School ‘Blue Devils,’” said Mr. Abrams two decades ago.

The nickname “Blue and Whites” was mentioned in the high school’s very first yearbook in 1930. In the years that followed other terms were used including “The Blue and White Machine” and “The Blues.” At one point the football team was called “The Pigskin Pushers.” Later sports teams were simply referred to as “The Huntington Team.”

In 1941 the nickname “Blue Devils” appears in the yearbook for the first time, beginning with the football team and later spreading to other sports. “In a catalog from Duke University, we found that they use a blue and white devil as their official logo,” Mr. Abrams explained. “We believe that Mr. Bill Class, longtime and popular physical education teacher, coach and director of sports, introduced the very same symbols to Huntington High School, with a front facing devil rather than one in profile.”

Further research indicated that the Huntington nickname definitely came from Duke University.

“The name of the Duke University athletic programs was inspired by the history of the Chasseurs Alpins, a group of French soldiers who fought in World War I,” according to an online history. “The name ‘Blue Devils’ received much support during the name contest held by the student newspaper in 1921. It was officially adopted two years later. Though the name of the team was made up in the early 1920s, the first logo with the Devil appeared only in 1936, and the image of a creature was present on all the logo version of the teams until 1978. As for the color palette of the Duke Blue Devils, it follows the name and during the history featured only two shades — blue and white, though there was one version, executed in monochrome.”

The Huntington Blue Devils nickname caught on and has been in continuous use for the past 84 years.