Football club names

Football club names are a part of the sport's culture, reflecting century-old traditions. Club names may reflect geographical, cultural, religious or political affiliations — or simply be the brand name of a club's primary sponsor. Because of the British origin of the sport, many clubs, even outside Europe, have their names written in English.

Formation of the name

Common components

A club's name is usually composed of two or more of the following elements, in most cases in the language of the club's home country:

* a word describing the type of entity that runs the club (or ran it when it was founded), such as "Club", "Association", "Society", "Centre", "League", "Union", etc. More recently some clubs are regular commercial enterprisesFact|date=July 2007 and may have this reflected in their names.
* a word indicating that the club is associated with some sport(s), usually (but not always) including football. Examples are "football", "athletics", "exercises", "sports", etc.
* a geographical name associating the club with some place (usually the town or region where it plays home matches). Examples: "Paris", "Milano", "Recife", "Croatia", "Goiás" or, alternatively, a word that associates the club with something else (a religious, cultural or political tradition). Sometimes the name of the town or the country may be written as in English (AC Milan).
* a proper name, mascot or nickname, like "Cruzeiro" "Betis", or "Crusaders".
* in Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands some clubs are associated with the monarchy like Real Madrid.
* some football clubs (especially in Austria and eastern Europe) also have sponsors in their club names.

Official names often also contain common component (prepositions, conjunctions, etc.) (See "List of common club name components" section).

In Europe, many (if not most) clubs are named after their towns or cities (e.g. "Deportivo La Coruña", "Liverpool FC", "Hamburger SV", etc. In South America, clubs are more likely to have proper names than to bear the city's name. Some clubs, like Hansa Rostock or Torpedo Moscow may have both.

Common versus official usage

It is not uncommon for a club to be known in common usage by a name other than its official name, or the name on the badge.

Official names may reflect the instances where two different clubs with exactly (or more or less) the same name, prompting one or both to be suffixed with a geographical distinction. Famous instances of this are PFC CSKA Moscow and CSKA Sofia; Dynamo Moscow, Dynamo Kyiv, Dynamo Dresden and Dinamo Tbilisi; América de Cali (Colombia) and Club América (Mexico).

Other clubs are more usually known by nicknames or contractions of their full names, for instance, Vasco da Gama is usually called simply "Vasco", F.C. Internazionale Milano is contracted to "Inter", Sporting Clube de Portugal are often called "Sporting". Manchester United is ofted shortened to "Man United" (or even "Man U"), and "Lyon" used instead of Olympique Lyonnais.

Some clubs are commonly referred to by their initials, such as QPR, for Queens Park Rangers.

In a few cases there are even common misconceptions about the official name of the club. A common example being Glasgow Rangers and Glasgow Celtic, where their proper official names are simply Rangers F.C. and Celtic F.C. Another misunderstanding is Belfast Crusaders where the proper name is just Crusaders F.C.

Club names referring to a profession or education

Club names referring to a profession

Club names referring to the club's specific origins

Club names referring to specific geographical features

Club names referring to real or mythical people

Club names referring to values and ideals

References