Finally, proof of how pickleball got its name

Since only a few years after pickleball was invented, there have been two different stories about why pickleball is called pickleball. In a recent interview with TikTok channel @pickleballbrian, the son of one of the inventors of the sport, Frank Pritchard, finally cleared up how pickleball got its name.

“My mother came up with the name because it was a crew term: the pickle boat,” Pritchard said. “The pickle boat evidently was just all the leftover rowers, from the A boat and the B boat. She thought: ‘Well this game is a bunch of different games thrown together. Let's call it pickleball.’ We didn't get the dog for another three years.”

Watch the full video here.

The two stories of how pickleball got its name are 1. The pickle boat theory, and 2. That the Pritchards’ dog was named Pickles. The second story came from a magazine article where Joel Pritchard said that they named pickleball after their dog — but he later admitted he only said that because he didn’t think the original story was interesting enough.

USA Pickleball also did an in-depth investigation about the controversy, and found that Pickles the dog was in fact born three years after the invention of pickleball in 1965.

Read the full story of how pickleball got its name here.