Suppose I want to put a description below a picture of a sports team or prepare t-shirts and other promotional gadgets with the name of the team.
Sometimes the team is well-known (Manchester United) or the name obviously indicates a sports team (Oakland Athletics).
But when the name is generic (Squirrels, Penguins, What-evers), has no city name in it and is not widely known, in order to avoid ambiguity it would probably be better to add the word “Team” to the title. Should “Team” go before or after the name, i.e. is it “Team X” or “X Team”? On TV we had “A-Team” but I’m not sure one can safely apply rules from TV series to real life.
EDIT: In my original examples the generic term was always plural but actually I’m also interested in the case of a singular name which could be a proper name at the same time (e.g. “Mars”, “Washington”, etc.).
Best Answer
I would not add "Team" either before or after the noun: Team Squirrel or Squirrel team. Taking a cue from sports, I would add "The" in front of the name. You've done that already by saying "squirrels," "penguins" or "whatevers." "The Squirrels"
By adding "The" it is no longer generic. The Giants, The A's, The Red Sox. None of them are called "Team Giants" or "Giant Team."
We don't pluralize header nouns, so if you do decide on [name] team, don't write Squirrels Team, write Squirrel Team.
That said, I would use "The" in front of the name. "The Squirrels eked out a 1 point victory over the Whatevers in today's JV basketball game."
This website shows team names on T shirts http://www.customink.com/team/team-names. If you didn't want to put "The Squirrels" on a T shirt, you could put "Squirrels Soccer / Soccer Team"