The name game: the role of epithets in the maintenance of moral authority in football

ABSTRACT

This exploratory paper examines the potential value of working with the concept of ‘epithets’ in football. We discuss that their variability and their possible significance in illuminating ways would-be football connoisseurs are able to internalize an archive of footballing memories – some directly experienced, others reflect on second-hand. We conclude that epithets contain their own message about the past and prevailing social relationships in football where they act as bearers of collective memory, operating through space and time and across national borders and cultures.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Usually ‘epithet’ is explained in terms of the fluidity of its meaning in terms of either negative or positive inflections. As Merriam-Webster nowadays reflects, ‘epithet’ is usually used negatively, with the meaning ‘a derogatory word or phrase’, but it was not always that way. ‘Epithet’ comes to us via Latin from the Greek noun epitheton and ultimately derives from epitithenai, meaning ‘to put on’ or ‘to add’. In its oldest sense, an ‘epithet’ is simply a descriptive word or phrase, especially one joined by fixed association to the name of someone or something (as in ‘Peter the Great’ or the stock Homeric phrases ‘gray-eyed Athena’ and ‘wine-dark sea’). Alternatively, epithets may be used in place of a name (as in ‘the Peacemaker’ or ‘the Eternal’). These neutral meanings of ‘epithet’ are still in use, but today the word is more often used in its negative ‘term of disparagement’ sense.

2. Leichter, The Problem of Collective Memory, 115.

3. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 4.

4. Diekema, Metaphors, Medicine, and Morals.

5. Guillen, The Taylorised Beauty of the Mechanical, 19

6. ‘La Maquina’.

7. Pablo and Rodríguez, ‘Football and Fatherland’, 122.

8. ‘La Maquina’.

9. ‘Football’s Greatest, Barcelona’.

10. Ibid.

11. ‘Machine of 87ʹ.

12. Weber, ‘Science as a Vocation’; Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber.

13. ‘Galacticos’.

14. ‘Club Atletico San Lorenzo de Almagro’.

15. ‘Lisbon Lions’.

16. ‘Everton Holy Trinity’.

17. ‘Angels with Dirty Faces’.

18. ‘Wunderteam’.

19. ‘Magical Magyars’.

20. ‘Wunderteam’.

21. Ibid.

22. ‘Preston Invincibles’; ‘Arsenal Invincibles’.

23. Lumpkin, Modern Sports Ethics.

24. Lamont and Molnar, ‘The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences’.

25. Morrison, ‘Marx, Durkheim, Weber’.

26. Wuthnow, Meaning and Moral Order.

27. ‘Estudiantes’ Killer Juveniles’.

28. Ibid.

29. ‘Dirty Leeds’.

30. Hunter, Biting Talk

31. Ibid.

32. ‘Dirty Leeds’.

33. Soccer Attic, ‘THE GOAL THAT MADE ME SAD AND GLAD’.

34. Wimbledon: ‘The Story of Wimbledon’s Crazy Gang’.

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid.

37. ‘Boring Boring Arsenal’.

38. ‘Greece Pirate Ship’.

39. Ibid.

40. ‘Bayern Munich FC Hollywood’.

41. Ibid.

42. Smart, The Sport Star.

43. Cashmore, Making Sense of Sport, 7.

44. ‘Liverpool FC Spice Boys’.

45. ‘Fergie’s Fledglings’.

46. Gunnaarson, ‘Balancing Flexibility’.

47. ‘Busby Babes’.

48. ‘Barcelona’s Baby Dream Team’.

49. ‘Portugal’s Golden Generation’.