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.”
<blockquote class="tiktok-embed" cite="https://www.tiktok.com/@pickleballbrian/video/7382803249541287198" data-video-id="7382803249541287198" style="max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px;" > <section> <a target="_blank" title="@pickleballbrian" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@pickleballbrian?refer=embed">@pickleballbrian</a> <a title="historyofpickleball" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/historyofpickleball?refer=embed">#historyofpickleball</a> <a title="pickleball" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/pickleball?refer=embed">#pickleball</a> <a title="picklballtiktok" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/picklballtiktok?refer=embed">#picklballtiktok</a> <a title="frankpritchard" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/frankpritchard?refer=embed">#frankpritchard</a> <a title="howpickleballgotitsname" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/howpickleballgotitsname?refer=embed">#howpickleballgotitsname</a> <a title="picklesthedog" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/picklesthedog?refer=embed">#picklesthedog</a> <a target="_blank" title="♬ original sound - pickleballbrian" href="https://www.tiktok.com/music/original-sound-7382803275050912542?refer=embed">♬ original sound - pickleballbrian</a> </section> </blockquote> <script async src="https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js"></script>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.