The story that I heard many years ago (and have been unable to confirm) is that the proprietors of the Hawaii Winter Baseball league trademarked the word "Stingrays" for a baseball team, so if the Tampa Bay ownership group wanted to name their MLB team "Stingrays," they would have to buy the mark from the Hawaii league.
As the story I heard went, the owners and HWB couldn't come to term$, and the TB group went with their backup plan, naming the team "Devil Rays" after a local species of ray.
This did not set well with many evangelical groups, who didn't even tangentially want the word "Devil" in the team's name. To assuage those concerns, the team removed "Devil" from the uniforms and signage, although "Devil Rays" was still the name of the team.
This wrangling over a winter league team's name didn't stop the Arizona Diamondbacks from adopting the name of an Arizona Winter League team.
