“I don’t use the term personally, and I think it is offensive and derogatory,” Wheeler told B&C/Multichannel News at a wireless conference in Las Vegas. “I am a Civil War buff,” he pointed out, “and there were a lot of terms that were appropriate at that time that aren’t appropriate any more.”

An FCC spokesperson on Wednesday confirmed Wheeler’s comments.

While the agency chairman finds the name offensive, he stopped short of calling for FCC action. The commission has the power to regulate indecent speech on the airwaves.

( Also on POLITICO: Plaintiff: Redskins appeal ‘doomed’)

“I think it would be great if the Washington football team would recognize those kinds of changes itself,” he said. “I hope that this is something that if enough people express themselves, [owner] Dan Snyder can see which way things are going.”

Former FCC officials and public interest advocates also have been critical of the name.

In a letter to Snyder earlier this year, former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, former Commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Nicholas Johnson and others contend that an indecency case could be made against broadcasters who air the offensive name.

“It is impermissible under law that the FCC would condone, or that broadcasters would use, obscene pornographic language on live television,” they wrote. “This medium uses government owned airwaves in exchange for an understanding that it will promote the public interest. Similarly, it is inappropriate for broadcasters to use racial epithets as part of normal, everyday reporting.”

Hundt later said in an email to POLITICO that “the FCC should hold a hearing. It would be on ESPN. Shame the name.”

For the FCC to deem the name Redskins indecent, it would have to expand the same indecency doctrine that has been tied in knots since the commission changed its standard to include “fleeting expletives” and flashes of nudity.

In May, 50 Democratic senators sent letters to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell urging him and the league to endorse changing the name. And in August, the team appealed a Patent and Trademark Office decision to cancel the team’s six federal trademarks.