Right now, the Bears are still officially the Chicago Bears, and there’s no indication from the team or the NFL that a name change is planned even if they move to Indiana.

What they’d most likely be called

If the Bears built a new stadium in Hammond, Indiana, the most realistic outcome is that they would remain the Chicago Bears , just playing their home games across the state line.

Other NFL teams already do this:

  • New York Giants and New York Jets play in New Jersey but keep “New York” in their names.
  • Dallas Cowboys play in Arlington, not Dallas, but the name never changed.

So the NFL has a strong precedent for keeping the big-city brand even when the stadium is somewhere else.

What fans and forums are joking about

In fan discussions and comment sections, people are tossing around a bunch of fun, speculative names, but these are just jokes, not real proposals.

Some examples that have popped up:

  • “Chicago Bears of Indiana” – leaning into the weirdness of crossing the state line.
  • “Hammond Bears” – swapping the city tag for the actual stadium city.
  • “Hammond Wolves” – one commenter suggested this as a total rebrand if they wanted something more local and less tied to Chicago.

None of these have any official backing; they’re just part of the current online debate about identity and tradition.

Why a name change is unlikely

A name change would be a massive branding decision:

  1. The Bears have played as the Chicago Bears for over 100 years and are tightly tied to the city’s identity.
  1. Team and state officials talking about the Indiana stadium continue to refer to them as the Chicago Bears, not a new name.
  1. The move being discussed is to northwest Indiana, still within the broader “Chicagoland” region, similar to how suburban stadiums work in other markets.

So unless they go for a radical rebrand (which there’s no sign of right now), expect them to stay the Chicago Bears—even in Indiana. TL;DR: If the Bears move to Indiana, they would almost certainly still be called the Chicago Bears , with any “Hammond” or “Indiana” nicknames staying in the realm of fan jokes and forum chatter.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.