Towns of the 92 English Football League Clubs and their Historic Diversity

By E R Neafcy

TOWNS OF THE 92 ENGLISH FOOTBALL LEAGUE CLUBS by E R Neafcy takes the reader beyond the well known and much loved football clubs of England to the places and towns where the clubs have grown. These place names tell a tale of the diversity of people that lived there and their ways of life. This booklet covers the towns and settlements from which grew the 92 clubs of the English Football League.

Some of the stories are surprising. The old English town of ‘Northworthy’ was later changed by Danish settlers to ‘Derby’. The Normans found difficulty in pronouncing ‘sn’ and so changed ‘Snotinghame’ to ‘Nottingham’. 16th century Spanish occupation of the Netherlands made Norwich first an asylum destination, then a world centre for canary breeding which accounts for the nickname and colours of the football club. The name London, the best known place-name in England, is conspicuously absent and does not appear in the name of any football club.

Lots of the towns’ coats of arms are of great antiquity. Often they indicate how the town sees itself, or used to. Not all of the town councils have registered a coat of arms with the College of Arms. Though the arms of many may be a faithful attempt to represent the town’s story, a coat of arms need not be a solemn piece of work. The royal coat of arms appears in the nation’s courts of justice. It features a unicorn, a fictitious animal! A word in a town’s motto might suggest an image that has nothing to do with the town’s story but is in some way funny, or is an ‘in-joke’ that locals understand. Why then not put that image in the heraldry, as Oldham, Rochdale, Sheffield and Wigan do?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781312162693

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Towns of the 92 English Football League Clubs: Diversity in Place-Name Origins, Club Origins and Council Mottos

E R Neafcy

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Towns of the 92 English Football League Clubs and their Historic Diversity

E R Neafcy

Published by E R Neafcy,

Email: [e-mail]

With the assistance of Clachan Publishing 26 Rathlin Road, Ballycastle, Glens of Antrim, BT54 6AQ

Website: http://clachanpublishing-com.

ISBN - 978-1-304-01583-9

First Edition published 2021

Copyright © E R Neafcy

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

This book contains material protected under International Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorised reprint, sale or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this eBook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author.

Diversity in place-names

There are thousands of place-names in the United Kingdom. When it was adopted, each name described the place in whatever language was in use in the particular area at the time, Celtic, Latin, Old English, or Scandinavian (Danish or Norse). Some had Norman French influence. If we can understand their meanings, we can see the diverse ethnic, cultural, or commercial origins of the settlements. With only a few exceptions, each of our football clubs relies on one of these age-old names to identify itself. This means that of all the country’s place-names, those we hear most often are those associated with our football clubs. These are the stories behind the names of the four leagues of the English Football League, covering 92 clubs in England and Wales 2021 -2022. Northern Ireland and Scotland have a different mix of place-name origins and their clubs play in other football leagues.

Diversity in the way we write

The script of this article is in itself evidence of diversity in our origins and of the adaptability that came from it. It is written using what we call the Roman alphabet, except it is n lower case with punctuation marks and the Romans had neither of these. Later writers added extra letters, some from Greek, some made up. One letter, which appears in early forms of some of the place-names of the football clubs, came and went: Latin had no ‘th’ sound, so a letter written as ‘ϸ’ and pronounced as ‘thorn’ was brought in from the Old English runic alphabet. The ‘Y’ of ‘Ye Olde Worlde’ is what became of this letter. French was the language of government for three centuries after the Norman conquest of 1066, but did not contribute much to place-name formation. Often the Normans changed the way pre-existing names were spelled and pronounced. Their main effect was to introduce Norman personal names. Old English and Scandinavian personal names fell out of use so that where they remain in place-names they are often unrecognisable to readers in later times. Going forward, English finds room for words from other languages where they can be applied. We see on TV analysis given in a light-hearted way by acknowledged experts who are pleased to describe themselves as ‘pundits’ – a word from India meaning a wise or learned person.

Diversity in our heraldry

Included in the entry for each football town there is the motto that the local council chooses or once chose to represent itself - if there is one. ‘Motto’ is Italian for ‘word’, but in heraldry it may be several words expressing a ‘pious aspiration’ or ‘exalted sentiment’. Mottos are not part of official coats of arms and may be and are changed in line with changes in aspirations and sentiments. (Similarly, club nicknames may change). The motto is another indicator of diversity; it may be in Latin (still the majority) as well as in English or, as there are Welsh towns whose clubs play in the English Football League, in Welsh. There is one council, a neighbour to the hometown of one of the clubs, which is in Dutch. Given the royal mottos – ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense’ and Dieu et Mon Droit, it is surprising none of the towns associated with the football clubs has a motto in French. It is especially surprising in that the ‘blazon’, the verbal prescription to which an official coat of arms is put together, uses words, many of which are of Old French or Norman origin. Highly prized though the word ‘democracy’ may be, this word of Greek origin does not appear in the mottos.

A picture containing text, clipart Description automatically generated Animals prescribed by the blazon could be ‘Rampant’, Rampant Guardant, Rampant Reguardant, and so on. left and right are ‘sinister’ and ‘dexter’. The Lion of England is a ‘Lion Passant Guardant Or’. The Welsh flag has a ‘Dragon Passant’. Several coats of arms may feature in a home town’s history of which the one shown is just one. The coats of arms are colourful and the colours have special heraldic names.