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Do we have the most famous nickname?


saintmatt

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Famous may be the wrong word, I probably mean most often used in place of our actual name.

 

I saw something on Twitter yesterday ranking us third in the Premier League for this, behind Wolves (probably fair) and Blues (Chelsea- not quite sure that’s right).

 

Tottenham were down as the Lilywhites for some reason, but otherwise I think they’d have ranked in the top 2 with Spurs.

 

But it got me thinking; I always refer to us as Saints and I’m pretty sure opposition fans and the press do it much more often than not.

 

Wonder why that it vs the frequency in the cases of other clubs.

 

Not sure of the point of this thread, but it beats some of the other stuff written on here hands down ;)

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For PL I’d say:

 

Wolves

Spurs

Saints

City

United

Foxes

 

In general:

Barca

Celtic

Rangers

Real

Bayern

 

Not sure how most of those shown above count as nicknames when they're actually basic abbreviations - in most cases one word from a two-word full club name.

 

Wolves, Saints, Foxes really are nicknames although clearly Wolves includes 5 of the first 6 letters of the team name so maybe its an abbreviation as well.

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Not sure how most of those shown above count as nicknames when they're actually basic abbreviations - in most cases one word from a two-word full club name.

 

Wolves, Saints, Foxes really are nicknames although clearly Wolves includes 5 of the first 6 letters of the team name so maybe its an abbreviation as well.

 

Yeah I get what you mean. No nicknames but how they are more often referred as. Not many say “Glasgow Celtic” etc.

 

I’d say we have one of the most famous nicknames in England if people were asked to quickly say the first English football team nickname that came into their head. I guess a few would reply “spurs” or “united” but they’d be wrong,

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Yeah I get what you mean. No nicknames but how they are more often referred as. Not many say “Glasgow Celtic” etc.

 

I’d say we have one of the most famous nicknames in England if people were asked to quickly say the first English football team nickname that came into their head. I guess a few would reply “spurs” or “united” but they’d be wrong,

Celtic's nickname is 'the Bhoys', they have never been known as 'Glasgow Celtic'
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Wolves are the only one where it sounds a bit odd NOT to use it, so they win. I usually stick to ‘Tottenham’ but even a lot of official sites simply go with Spurs, but they wouldn’t go with ‘Saints’.

 

Think we have a case for third place though. Pretty sure the Tweet you are referring to was “how acceptable it is to casually drop the nickname into conversation”.

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Celtic's nickname is 'the Bhoys', they have never been known as 'Glasgow Celtic'

 

Read again. I didn’t say nickname, I agreed with the other poster about my suggestions not being nicknames.

 

But after some quick research you are indeed correct they have never been called Glasgow Celtic.

Edited by OttawaSaint
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Apparently Tottenham's official nickname is the 'Lilywhites'. I doubt any of their own fans even refer to them as that!!

 

I refer to them as that to my Spurs supporting mates when on the wind up, especially over their lack of trophies for many years yadda yadda. Works well.

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What about the papers headers we’ve had in the past?

 

Saints sinners

Saints alive

Saints go marching in

Still the best paper headline but not Saints is "Super Caley go ballistic - Celtic are atrocious" After Inverness Caledonian Thistle beat Celtic at Parkhead 1-3 in the Scottish Cup - John Barnes got the tin-tack a couple of days later.

 

Apologies for the deviation from the subject :D

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My favourite non-Saints headline comes from many years ago, when Crystal Palace had a player called Gerry Wueen playing for them. During one game, he had a fight with an opposition player and was sent off. Newspaper headline the following day was "Queen in Brawl at Palace"......

 

Sent from my SM-G975F using Tapatalk

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Interesting that nobody has mentioned our fishy neighbors yet.

 

I'd say their nickname is at least as widely used as ours, if not more.

 

I thought of them, but this discussion is only about those who dine at the top table, not out of bins.

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Interesting that nobody has mentioned our fishy neighbors yet.

 

I'd say their nickname is at least as widely used as ours, if not more.

 

Assuming you mean the P word and not Skates, it's because it's not really their name, the word was used as a nickname for the town years before that football club was ever formed. Also, the the thread was about proper football clubs not care in the community tin pot clubs.

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Assuming you mean the P word and not Skates, it's because it's not really their name, the word was used as a nickname for the town years before that football club was ever formed. Also, the the thread was about proper football clubs not care in the community tin pot clubs.

 

Sorry but I have to disagree. Regardless of the origin of the name, it is most definitely recognised as their official (and only, outside of Southampton) nickname.

 

https://www.football-stadiums.co.uk/articles/club-nicknames/#league-one

 

Definitely agree about the last bit though ;)

Edited by Sheaf Saint
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That's a very good headline saintmatt, much depends on how old you are.

 

When I was a kid Wolves were by far the biggest nickname "brand" whilst other well known ones included The Blades, The Owls, The Gunners, The Toffees, The Geordies even Pompey. I can't recall Man C, Man U, Chelsea or Liverpool having particularly famous nicknames at the time and even 'Spurs' was not that famous. The Seasiders was also a top team but alas no longer.

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Sorry but I have to disagree. Regardless of the origin of the name, it is most definitely recognised as their official (and only, outside of Southampton) nickname.

 

https://www.football-stadiums.co.uk/articles/club-nicknames/#league-one

 

Definitely agree about the last bit though ;)

The point is not whether it's their nickname, it's that it became their nickname only because it was the town's nickname long before.

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What about the papers headers we’ve had in the past?

 

Saints sinners

Saints alive

Saints go marching in

 

My favourite headlines were after a great game the Echo or football echo would often have a headline Ding, Dong Dell.

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Glad to see this discussed.

 

I utterly love our nickname, use it to generally describe us and think it has a certain cache, partly because it isn't just a derivative of our name.

 

What I loathe is "So'ton" or "S'ton" being used as an abbreviation. One of the reasons our nickname works is that "Southampton" is too long a name for some headlines or graphics, but we should be trying to get the wider media to use Saints not apostrophes.

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Glad to see this discussed.

 

I utterly love our nickname, use it to generally describe us and think it has a certain cache, partly because it isn't just a derivative of our name.

 

What I loathe is "So'ton" or "S'ton" being used as an abbreviation. One of the reasons our nickname works is that "Southampton" is too long a name for some headlines or graphics, but we should be trying to get the wider media to use Saints not apostrophes.

 

Talking of apostrophes, My lady has often walked into a game I’m watching and asked me who are Wham - Ars.

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Talking of apostrophes, My lady has often walked into a game I’m watching and asked me who are Wham - Ars.

That just made me think of when I worked for the Reading Evening Post many moons ago, in those days the back page of the paper (most local papers really years ago) had a blank space across the bottom. At 4:30pm a grumpy bloke would come in and set up a little machine, like the one found in schools before photocopiers existed, and type up the football scores and a small run of papers would be printed with the days results. I got a couple of them to put in Saints.

One bloke did his best and succeeded in getting taken off Saturday afternoon duty as for ages he abbreviated as many teams as he could to amuse himself, Arsenal was obvious so was Partick Thistle, one Saturday he pushed the boat out and the complaints rolled in as those checking their Pools coupon all of a sudden saw lots of saucy words. Think the steel town just south of Hull on the north east coast was the tipping point

Edited by John Boy Saint
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