Those European style names are because international clubs began investing in MLS.
The Abu Dhabi royal family's fund that owns Man City has 80% ownership of NYCFC, who started the "FC" naming trend in MLS, and plenty of other MLS clubs are owned by people who also own European clubs.
> Half of the league’s names are an insult to North American sports culture
What the hell is "North American sports culture".
Naming conventions in Soccer/Football have always been European based because it is the primary region for prestige Soccer.
It's like complaining about Israeli or Chinese Basketball leagues using NBA style names and jerseys or Mexican College Football (yes that is a very popular thing there, and the Big10 is considering adding them to the conference) using Big10 style branding and stadiums despite soccer being more popular in those places
The aesthetic matters from a branding perspective.
Lots of people whose cultural origin isn't in the US or Canada do, and that overlaps a lot with the people who care about soccer at all.
Originally, it was perfectly normal North American naming convention, $PLACE $NOUN. Then sometime in the aughts, they started bringing in boring European names, and worse yet, just aping them for no reason. Only the pretentious call soccer “football” in North America, and no one calls themselves a “sports club”. Even the Baseball Club of Seattle, doesn’t call themselves “Seattle BC”. They’re the Mariners. Half of the league’s names are an insult to North American sports culture.
A special place in sports hell is set for the dude that named Real Salt Lake. He explicitly aped Real Madrid because he’s such a fan. Dude. We literally fought a war to overthrow a monarchy.