An oddly singular Lynx

And speaking of the WNBA draft, I was talking about it with a coworker, who wondered why the Minnesota team is named after a chain.

Well, it's not - but its name is an interesting question.

WNBA team names fall into several categories. One group complements the name of the NBA team in the city - many of the original WNBA teams were sister teams, owned by the same franchise, and even some that are independently owned have complementary names. Among these (the NBA name is in italics):

Washington Mystics Wizards
Orlando Miracle Magic
Sacramento Monarchs Kings
Utah Starzz Jazz (and the Stars of the ABA)
Phoenix Mercury Suns (Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, hence the name)
Houston Comets Rockets (the name Rockets suggests space, so I put them here.)

Some are named for local resonance:

New York Liberty
Seattle Storm (the weather)
San Antonio Silver Stars (Texas Rangers, right?)
Chicago Sky (named for the city's skyline)

And there's this one:

Connecticut Sun

which might be like the Sky but I don't know the rationale for the name. which, a commenter tells me, is named after the Mohegan Sun, a casino belonging to the current owners, the Mohegan tribe. So it is a local-resonance name.

One has a nice, plural noun traditional kind of name that doesn't relate to anything (as far as I can tell):

Los Angeles Sparks

A couple have those new-fangled singular-noun names that make me think of soccer:

Atlanta Dream
Indiana Fever

And there's this one, which seems a combo:

Detroit Shock

which might complement the men's Pistons but should be Shocks, right? Still - like Chicago (the Cows? I don't think so!) you can see why they might have decided to drift a bit in the semantic range.

So far, so good. But then there's this:

Minnesota Lynx

Okay, they're a complement to the Timberwolves. But please note: that is the TimberwolVES, not Timberwolf.

Just like the Bulls, Bears, Jaguars, Hornets, Rays, Orioles, Ravens, Tigers, Lions, and so on.

Why on earth is this a singular Lynx? Lynxes aren't like deer or fish; there is a plural form. This team should be the Lynxes.