The gang began with a group of mainly European youths from Wellington and Hawke's Bay in the 1960s. Legend within the gang holds that the name originated from the comments of a judge in the Hastings District Court, who referred to a group of men before him as "mongrels". Whatever the origin, the group embraced the term. By the late 1960s loose groups of rebellious young men in Wellington and Hawke's Bay were calling themselves Mongrels. By 1966 they were wearing patches bearing the name 'Mongrel Mob'.