Engine 151 and Ladder 76 in Staten Island, known collectively for years as Southern Comfort, were told to change their moniker after a sangria- and beer-fueled firehouse brawl in late 2003 over the date of Elvis Presley’s birthday.  The fight ended with one firefighter smashing the other in the face with a metal folding chair. Criminal and departmental charges followed.  The Happy Hookers of Red Hook’s Engine 279 were also told to change their name about a year ago.  “The uniform means a great deal, and anyone in it should treat it with great respect,” said Francis X. Gribbon, a former firefighter and current Fire Department spokesman.  The patches are now regulated, and the colors and designs are subject to approval by a borough fire commander. They can be no bigger than 3 ¾ inches wide and 4 ½ inches high.  Engine 151 dropped Southern Comfort and is now South Shore Pride. Engine 75, the former Animal House, and Engine 279, once the Happy Hookers, have yet to replace their old nicknames.  Names like Happy Hookers were once nonissues, sophomoric plays on words referring to neighborhoods or to hook and ladder tools. “But in this day and age, things are different,” Mr. Gribbon said.  Referring to the Staten Island brawl and the Bronx sex scandal, he said, “No question, it was after those incidents that this review took place And it was decided that things like Southern Comfort, because of its obvious connotation, was not appropriate.”  A report by the city Department of Investigation in 2005 found that in addition to Animal House, a few other firehouses had adopted “equally unbecoming nicknames.” Among the others it listed were Engine 214 in Brooklyn (the Nut House), Ladder 30 in Harlem (the Harlem Zoo), Engine 90 in the Bronx (90 Proof) and Engine 315 in Queens (Clown College).  As for Animal House, investigators did their best to figure out where the name came from. When asked if the namesake was the popular 1978 movie “Animal House,” which depicted a drunken bunch of hard-partying fraternity boys, firefighters gave wildly different answers.  One said the name came from “the era when fire engines were pulled by horses.” Another said the name stemmed from a firehouse mascot, a Muppets character named Animal. Still another said the nickname may have come from their predecessors’ kind approach toward animals, when the firehouse was “home to stray dogs and rodents,” the report said.  The review of patches echoes another recent controversy surrounding firefighters’ lockers. In that case, department brass ordered that everything but a firefighter’s name be stripped from lockers, including stickers of American flags. The policy came about after incidents involving racially or sexually offensive material. Pictures of naked women or otherwise questionable material was torn from locker doors.  The Uniformed Firefighters Association, which fought and won the right of firefighters to display American flags, pictures of relatives and other noncontroversial items on their lockers, did not return phone calls to comment on the patch issue.  The review of patches dug deep into the culture of the department; firefighters see the patches as a way of channeling the spirit of those who have come through the house before them to those who will come after. They are a means of finding comedy in tragedy, strength when strength is feigned and a sense of personality where uniformity is expected.  “We like to identify with the smaller group,” said Lt. Paul Conboy of Engine 218’s Bomberos in Bushwick, Brooklyn. “We’re proud to be part of the bigger Fire Department as a whole, but this gives us a little bit of individuality.”  The patches are worn on the right sleeve, opposite the department’s official patch, which shows the city skyline and a red flame circled in red. They are optional; some firefighters wear them on their bunker coats, others on their dress uniforms. The tighter the company, firefighters say, the more patches you will see.  On a recent afternoon at the Bomberos’ house on Hart Street, Lieutenant Conboy scanned a large framed poster of Fire Department patches hanging in the watch room.  There were patches with Popeye, flaming skulls, Snoopy, bulldogs and an assortment of fierce-looking creatures. There were patches with firehouse nicknames and slogans, like the Bedford Express, the Fighting Forty-Four, the Tillary Street Tigers and the Tin House. There were eagles and shamrocks and a bunch of hooks, hoses and ladders.  “Some people make fun of other companies’ patches, but I think ours is pretty good,” Lieutenant Conboy said.  The Bomberos were anointed 20 or 25 years ago, he said. The residents of the largely Hispanic neighborhood had long called them the bomberos, or firefighters in Spanish. While out on calls they would hear people screaming, “Bomberos, bomberos!”  Then a cousin of a firefighter in the house came up with the idea of a patch and a design and rallied the approval of the others. The design shows a firefighter with a big hat and mustache, flames burning behind him, looking as if he is prepared, with itchy fingers, for a Wild West shootout. But instead of guns in holsters are two water hoses.  In Midtown Manhattan, at the firehouse of Engine 54 and Ladder 4, Rich Kane, a second-generation firefighter, mused on a neighborhood woman in her 70s who wears the firehouse’s patch draped around her neck.  After the Sept. 11 attacks, she would come by the firehouse, on Eighth Avenue in the theater district, and tend to the flowers being left by mourners. She soon became a fixture outside the firehouse. From time to time she still drops by. “She walks around the neighborhood wearing our patch like a necklace,” Firefighter Kane said. “For us, it’s a pride thing.”  Their patch shows a large theater marquee with the engine and ladder numbers. Below it are the comedy and tragedy masks, framed by the phrase “The Pride of Midtown, Never Missed a Performance.”  A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Firefighters’ Symbol of Pride Gets Image Upgrade. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
The patches of the New York Fire Department are slowly being refashioned after two incidents prompted a department review.