Vermarktungsnamen von Sportmannschaften : Warum nennen sich Mannschaften Nürnberg Barracudas, Dresden Titans oder Deichstadtvolleys?

Kurzfassung/Abstract

In Germany, the names of sports teams are often identical to the sports clubs a team is part of, cf., e. g., 1. FC Nürnberg. Apart from this traditional naming custom, some sports teams use names of a more recent structure as part of their marketing, cf. Nürnberg Barracudas. Such names are found outside soccer, mostly in newly promoted sports with well-known professional leagues in North America, e. g., baseball or American football, but also in sports with a strong European tradition such as rowing or floorball. A database of such names was gathered from sports reports in journalism and from the highest national leagues in Germany. An exploratory analysis of the data shows that the names frequently combine a city or region name (in simple, underived form) with a descriptive English noun (e. g., Saarlouis Hornets). The descriptive item often refers to the sports themselves (e. g., Volleys), to animals with a strong and aggressive connotation, or to persons. In journalism, descriptive parts are often used both in the English form and in German translation to increase stylistic variation. In some team names, the names of sponsoring companies are included, but only few sponsor names are used as main reference for a team.