A Story of an Unconditional Love and Hate: the Nicknames of Football Teams

Our article is a lexical analysis that concerns the world of football and speaks about unofficial names for football teams, which exist alongside their official names and often reflect the strong feelings of their supporters and their opponents. For example, beside the official name, Futbol Club Barcelona the media use metonymic names evoking the colors of the club like Blaugranes or Azulgranas, but they also use a more emotional name - Barca. However, this same club is sometimes given a pejorative name - cules, coming from cul 'behind' in Catalan, or polacos 'Poles' (the pejorative name by which the Spanish designate the Catalans). Our analysis of the forms, content and roles of the unofficial names of some (French, Spanish and Polish) football teams allows us to propose a clear distinction between two types of nicknames: surnoms and sobriquets, two very distinct categories of chrematonyms.