The team was founded in 1924. The owner, Charles Weston Adams, also owned a local retail chain whose colors were brown with yellow trim. A naming contest stipulated the nickname would be "an untamed animal whose name was synonymous with size, strength, agility, ferocity, and cunning; and in the color brown." (A bruin is a type of bear.) The uniform front shows a wheel, which is believed to refer to the hub configuration of Boston's streets.