The city of Buffalo, New York
Buffalo, New York, sits on the eastern shore of Lake Erie at the western end of the Erie Canal. The city was founded in the late 18th century at the mouth of Buffalo Creek and grew rapidly through the 19th century as the western terminus of the canal trade. The city's name comes from the creek's name, which is attested in maps and records from the 1750s onward.
The etymology of "Buffalo Creek" is contested. Two main theories compete in the historical literature. The first, the conventional bison theory, holds that the creek was named for actual bison observed at or near the creek by early European and Indigenous travellers. American bison did historically range into the eastern woodland fringe of the Great Plains and there is some sparse evidence that small bison populations may have penetrated as far east as western New York and Pennsylvania during favourable historical periods. The second, the French derivation theory, holds that the name comes from the French phrase beau fleuve ("beautiful river"), used by 18th century French explorers to describe the area's waterways, and then anglicised into "Buffalo" by later English-speaking settlers. The phonetic correspondence is plausible but the documentary evidence is thin.
Neither theory has been conclusively established. The bison theory is more commonly cited in popular sources and is the version most often taught in local history. The French derivation theory has serious scholarly support and is treated as plausible in academic linguistic literature. The most honest current assessment is that the name's origin is uncertain and may include elements of both theories. What is clear is that the city has been called Buffalo for more than two centuries and that the name has long since become an irreducible feature of the area's identity.
The bison range question
Whether American bison were ever native to the immediate Buffalo NY area is itself a contested question. The modern conservation literature generally places the historical bison range as the Great Plains and the immediately adjacent boreal forest, with limited extension into the eastern woodlands during favourable climate periods. The so-called eastern bison (Bison bison pennsylvanicus) is a proposed but contested subspecies that some authors describe as having ranged east of the Appalachians into western Pennsylvania and possibly into western New York in the 17th and 18th centuries. Most modern taxonomists do not recognise the eastern bison as a distinct subspecies and treat any eastern bison records as edge-of-range plains bison.
The historical record on actual bison sightings in the Buffalo area is sparse. Some early European travellers' accounts mention buffalo or "wild cattle" in western New York, but the references are too few and too uncertain to support a clear conclusion. Whether or not isolated bison ever wandered as far east as Buffalo Creek, there was no resident breeding bison population in western New York during the period that produced the creek's name. The "buffalo" in the city name almost certainly does not refer to a locally observed permanent bison population in any straightforward sense.
Buffalo Bill Cody
William F. Cody (1846-1917) was a Civil War veteran, a Pony Express rider, a US Army scout, and from 1867 to 1868 a contract bison hunter supplying meat to railroad construction crews building the Kansas Pacific Railroad across the central Plains. Cody is credited with killing 4,280 bison in his eighteen months as a contract hunter, earning the nickname "Buffalo Bill" that he kept for the rest of his life.
Cody parlayed his frontier reputation into the show business career that made him one of the most famous Americans of the late 19th century. Buffalo Bill's Wild West, the touring show he founded in 1883, performed across the United States and Europe through 1913. The show staged dramatised reenactments of Plains warfare, included Indigenous performers (most famously Sitting Bull, who toured with the show for a season in 1885), featured live bison and other Plains animals, and was one of the most commercially successful entertainment properties of the era. The show's international tours introduced European audiences to the visual mythology of the American West and established Cody and his persona as global figures.
Cody himself became a complicated participant in the bison conservation movement. The same man who had killed thousands of bison as a contract hunter later expressed regret at the species' collapse, joined early conservation organisations, and lent his Wild West reputation to public-awareness efforts aimed at protecting the surviving bison population. The 1894 Lacey Act, the first federal bison protection legislation, drew political support partly from the public visibility of the bison's near-extinction that Cody's show and others had helped to communicate. Cody's late-life embrace of conservation does not undo his earlier role in the species' decline but does reflect the shifting attitudes of the era.
The 1946 All-America Football Conference team
The first Buffalo Bills professional football team was founded in 1946 as a charter member of the All-America Football Conference, a short-lived rival league to the National Football League. The team name was chosen through a local naming contest. The winning entry connected the city's name to Buffalo Bill Cody, framing the team as the personification of the city's buffalo-themed identity through the lens of the most famous "Buffalo" person in American cultural memory.
The AAFC Bills played four seasons (1946-1949) before the AAFC folded and three of its teams (the Cleveland Browns, the Baltimore Colts, and the San Francisco 49ers) merged into the NFL. The Buffalo team was not among the three absorbed and ceased operations at the end of the 1949 season. The team's name, colours, and the broader Buffalo-as-football-city identity remained in the local memory and were inherited by the successor franchise when it was founded a decade later.
The modern NFL franchise
The modern Buffalo Bills, the franchise that has played continuously since 1960, was founded as one of the eight charter members of the American Football League. The team kept the Buffalo Bills name from the AAFC era as a deliberate continuation of the local football identity. The Bills played in the AFL through 1969, winning AFL championships in 1964 and 1965, and joined the NFL with the rest of the AFL in the 1970 merger.
The franchise's identity has been built around the Buffalo name and the charging bison logo across the entire modern era. The team's logo has been redesigned several times but has always featured the American bison in charging profile, rendered in the team's red, white, and blue colour scheme. The Bills' Super Bowl runs of the early 1990s (four consecutive AFC championships from 1990 through 1993, all four losing the Super Bowl) cemented the franchise's place in NFL history and made the charging bison logo one of the most familiar in American professional sports.
The team's home stadium, currently in the village of Orchard Park outside Buffalo, has been variously known across the decades by sponsor and renamed iterations (currently Highmark Stadium as of the 2024 season). The fan base, known for their loyalty across difficult seasons and for the "Bills Mafia" organised fan culture, is among the more recognisable in the NFL.
The naming logic
The Buffalo Bills name is therefore the product of three nested layers of naming. At the bottom is the city of Buffalo NY, named for Buffalo Creek, which may or may not have been named for actual bison. In the middle is William F. Cody, "Buffalo Bill," who became the most famous bearer of the buffalo name in 19th century American culture, despite being personally associated with the Great Plains 1,500 miles west of Buffalo NY. At the top is the football franchise (1946 and again 1960) that took the city's buffalo-themed identity and gave it a sports brand through the Buffalo Bill Cody reference.
The American bison in the modern Bills logo is therefore the visual answer to a layered question. The team's animal is unmistakably a bison because the "buffalo" the team is named for is, at root, the American bison of the Great Plains, no matter how many cultural intermediaries (Cody, the creek name, the city name, the previous AAFC team) the connection runs through. Bison Bills would be more scientifically accurate. Buffalo Bills is what stuck because the cultural pathway from species to football franchise ran through every intermediate step using the buffalo name.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a connection between Buffalo NY and the bison conservation movement?
Indirect but real. The city of Buffalo NY houses the Buffalo Zoo, which has held bison since the 19th century and which contributed to the early captive-bison conservation network. The Buffalo Zoo's bison were drawn from the same broad pool of captive animals that produced the founders of the major early 20th century conservation herds. The city's name and the species in its zoo created a small ongoing connection between the place and the animal across the conservation era.
Why didn't the team change the name to Bison Bills when the species distinction became more widely known?
Because the name has more than seventy years of brand equity in its current form and because the bison/buffalo naming distinction is a relatively obscure issue from the perspective of the team's main fan base. The team's logo is already a bison and the visual identity is correct. Changing the verbal name would impose substantial commercial cost for limited gain.
Was Buffalo Bill ever actually in Buffalo, NY?
Yes, occasionally. Buffalo Bill's Wild West toured to Buffalo NY as one of its many stops during the show's 1880s and 1890s seasons. Cody's career was primarily based in the Plains and in the show-touring circuit rather than in any single eastern city, but he did make multiple visits to Buffalo NY across his career.
Are there any other NFL teams named for the wrong species?
None as taxonomically confused as the Bills. Some teams use generic names (the Vikings, the Steelers, the Patriots) and some use specific species correctly named (the Cardinals, the Eagles, the Falcons, the Jaguars, the Panthers, the Rams). The Bills are the most prominent example of a US professional sports franchise named with a vernacular term for an animal whose taxonomic identity is technically different.