Funny team names for quiz night: 100+ ideas that work for office and charity quizzes

In short

• The best funny team names for quiz night are short, clean and easy to read out loud: the joke has to land the moment the host says it.
• Puns on the word “quiz” are the safest bet, and office in-jokes get the biggest reaction at a work event.
• At a corporate or charity quiz, keep names free of swearing, innuendo and jokes about colleagues. A name everyone can laugh at beats one that only half the room enjoys.
• There are over 100 ideas below, sorted into punny, office, clean, charity and themed lists.
• A prize for the best team name is the cheapest way to get the room laughing before question one.

A quiz starts before the first question. It starts when the names are read out, and a room that laughs at the team names is already warmed up. That is why funny team names for quiz night are worth ten minutes of thought, especially at a work or charity event where the audience is mixed and the names go up on a screen.

I host quizzes for companies and fundraisers as a professional quiz master, so this list leans one way on purpose: every name here is safe to read out in front of the chief executive, a client, or somebody’s mum.

What makes funny team names for quiz night work?

Funny team names for quiz night work when they are short, instantly understood, and funny out loud rather than just on paper. The name will be read by a host into a microphone, often ten or twenty times across the evening, so it has to survive repetition.

Quiz teams have always done this. The tradition of choosing a name that is a pun or a supposedly humorous phrase is as old as the pub quiz itself, which took off in Britain in the 1970s. Puns suit the job because of how jokes work: humour researchers describe a moment of incongruity followed by a sudden resolution, and a pun delivers both in two or three words. Your brain holds two meanings at once and enjoys the collision.

Three quick tests before you commit:

• Can the host say it? Anything that needs spelling out, or only works written down, will fall flat.
• Is it under six words? Long names get shortened by the host, usually to the least funny part.
• Would you say it to the whole room yourself? If not, pick another.

Punny quiz team names

These are the classics and their cousins: wordplay on “quiz”, “trivia” and famous titles. They work in any room because nobody needs inside knowledge to get them.

• Les Quizerables
• Quiz Pro Quo
• Let’s Get Quizzical
• Agatha Quiztie
• Universally Challenged
• The Quizzy Rascals
• Quiz Team Aguilera
• The Quizzly Bears
• Risky Quizness
• Mission Quizpossible
• Quizness as Usual
• The Fellowship of the Quiz
• Quiztopher Columbus
• Sherlock Homies
• The Usual Subjects
• Know Eye Deer
• Pop Quiz Hot Shots
• Trivial Pursuits of Happiness
• The Fact Hunters
• Game of Phones
• Smarty Pints
• I Thought This Was Speed Dating

Office quiz team names

Office quiz team names get the loudest laugh at a work event, because the whole room shares the reference. If you want quiz team name ideas for work, start with the things everyone in the building complains about.

• Ctrl Alt Defeat
• Reply All
• Per My Last Email
• You’re on Mute
• The Out of Offices
• Spreadsheet Happens
• The Pivot Tables
• Excel Lent
• Inbox Zeroes
• Any Other Business
• Circle Back Later
• Close of Play
• Bandwidth Issues
• The Hot Deskers
• The Annual Leavers
• Printer Jam Session
• This Could Have Been an Email
• The Quarter Four Horsemen
• Accounts Deceivable
• Sales Force Awakens
• The Legal Eagles
• Ops, We Did It Again
• HR Would Like a Word
• The Stakeholders

Department puns are the easy win. A finance team called Accounts Deceivable will be heckled all night, which is exactly what you want from a corporate quiz night.

What are clean quiz team names for corporate events?

Clean quiz team names for corporate events are ones that are funny without swearing, innuendo or a target. Self-deprecating names are the most reliable here, because the only people being laughed at are the team themselves.

• The Know It Owls
• The Brains Trust
• The Clever Clogs
• Fingers on Buzzers
• The Educated Guesses
• The Wild Guesses
• Nearly Right
• Fifty Fifty
• Phone a Friend
• Second Place Is Fine
• Here for the Buffet
• We Peaked in Round One
• Four Brains and a Spare
• The Last Minute Entries
• Team Name Pending
• Best Guess Collective
• Table Mannered
• The Tie Breakers
• In It for the Biscuits
• Google Was Our Sixth Member

Which charity quiz team names suit a fundraiser?

Charity quiz team names suit a fundraiser when they nod to the cause or the giving without making light of it. Aim the joke at the fundraising mechanics (the raffle, the bidding, the pledges) rather than at the charity’s work.

• Give It Our Best Shot
• All for a Good Cause
• The Good Causes
• Quiz for Good
• Raising the Bar
• The Generous Guessers
• The Dig Deep Thinkers
• The Gift Aiders
• Donation Station
• The Raffle Rousers
• The Paddle Raisers
• Bidding War Veterans
• Heads or Tails Experts
• The Pledge Hammers

Funny team names for quiz night by theme

If your quiz has a theme, or your team has an obvious shared interest, a themed name does half the work for you. These are sorted by subject.

Film and television

• The Quizzard of Oz
• Quizzy Blinders
• Line of Trivia
• Only Fools and Answers
• The Great British Guess Off
• Strictly Come Guessing
• Stranger Things We Know
• Lord of the Ring Binders

Music

• Fleetwood Maths
• Guns N’ Answers
• Take That Guess
• The Rolling Tomes
• Red Hot Trivia Peppers
• Florence and the Answer Machine
• Spice Guess
• Earth, Wind and Wireless

Food and drink

• Nacho Average Team
• Lettuce Win
• The Thyme Wasters
• Bready or Not
• Tea and Trivia
• The Custard Creamers
• Biscuit Tin Brains

Sport

• Extra Time Wasters
• The Own Goal Scorers
• The Bench Warmers
• Top of the Table
• Net Gains
• Sub Standard

Christmas

• Merry Quizmas
• Quizmas Crackers
• Rebel Without a Claus
• Yule Be Sorry
• The Elf Help Group
• Sleigh My Name
• Santa’s Little Guessers
• The Wise Men Plus Two
• Sprout and About

The Christmas names are worth saving if you are planning an office Christmas quiz, where a themed name is close to compulsory.

How do you pick a quiz team name?

You pick a quiz team name by starting with what the team has in common, then finding the shortest joke that says it. The shared thing might be a department, a floor, a client, a running joke, or simply being the table nearest the bar.

A simple way to do it in five minutes:

1. List what you share. Job, location, a project name, the thing your team is known for.
2. Look for the pun. Swap one word in a famous title, song or phrase for something from your list.
3. Say it out loud. If it needs explaining, drop it.
4. Check it against the room. Clients, senior staff and new starters will all hear it.
5. Have a spare. Somebody else will have thought of Les Quizerables.

Team size matters too. Guidance for fundraising quizzes usually suggests six to ten people per team, and with a group that size the name should belong to the whole table, not be one person’s private joke.

Should you give a prize for the best team name?

Yes, a prize for the best team name is worth giving, because it rewards effort before any knowledge is tested. It gives the teams who know they will finish last something to win, and it gives the host a ready-made opening.

Announce it on the invitation so teams arrive with a name already chosen. On the night, read every name out, let the room react, and judge by the noise. A small prize is enough: the point is the laugh, not the trophy.

If you are running the night yourself, put the names on the scoreboard rather than table numbers. Seeing the name climb or sink after each round keeps the joke alive all evening, and it is one of the things good quiz software does for you.

Which team names should you avoid at a work quiz?

Avoid any team name at a work quiz that is rude, aimed at a named colleague, or built on someone’s age, sex, race, religion, disability or sexuality. A work quiz is still work, and the same standards apply to a team name as to anything else said in the office.

This is more than etiquette. Acas lists jokes among the behaviours that can amount to harassment, and it is clear that behaviour can count even if unintended. A name that seemed hilarious at the table can look very different on a screen in front of 200 people.

The practical rules:

• No swearing or innuendo. That rules out a good half of the lists you will find elsewhere online.
• No jokes about a person. Departments are fair game. Individuals are not.
• No current tragedies or politics. Somebody in the room will be closer to it than you think.
• Give the organiser a veto. One line on the entry form (“names may be edited”) saves an awkward conversation.

Once the names are sorted, the rounds are the next job, and I have set out the formats I use in a guide to quiz round ideas.

Do team names matter if you hire a quiz master?

Team names matter more with a hired quiz master, because a good host will use them all night. They are the first material the room gives the host, and they set up the rivalries that make the scores worth caring about.

A host worth booking will ask for the names before the start, read every one out, and come back to the best of them between rounds. A table called Second Place Is Fine that goes into the final round in the lead is a gift, and a room that has laughed together at the names is far easier to keep playing to the last question.

If you are planning a work or charity quiz and want it run as a proper show, tell me about the night and the room, and have a look at how I work as a quiz host for corporate events.