I googled Pickleball and discovered a Wikipedia entry at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PickleballThe first game was played when people wanted to play badminton but no one could find the shuttlecock. All they could find was a wiffle ball so they ended up moving the net down and "fabricated paddles of plywood from a nearby shed."
Which makes me wonder if they were spankos. Who else says "we can't find the badminton equipment so let's make some paddles"?
Anyway, it's played with leftover parts from other games (wiffle ball, badminton net), a Pickle Boat is crewed with "oarsmen ... chosen from the leftovers of other boats", so they named it Pickleball.
The paddles don't seemed designed to do anything but play the game, but who knows what a Pickleball Paddle looks like? Carry your regular paddle if asked about it call it a Pickleball paddle. If someone looks it up on the net they'll probably think it's a varient of the standard Pickleball paddle.