Worst Team Names (Big League)

[pianoknight]

While we're nitpicking useless things, why not go after "LA" itself? The full city name is not merely Los Angeles, but rather El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles del Río Porciúncula, so if you want to flip in into English we should be talking about the Town of Our Lady the Queen of Angels of the River Porciúncula Angels of Anaheim.

 

[The_Admiral]

"Anaheim Angels" is most certainly alliterative. Assonance and consonance concern recurring sounds not necessarily at the beginnings of words.

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

45 minutes ago, the admiral said:

"Anaheim Angels" is most certainly alliterative. Assonance and consonance concern recurring sounds not necessarily at the beginnings of words.

 

Assonance refers to the repetition of vowel sounds.  Consonance refers to the repetition of consonant sounds; and alliteration is a specific kind of consonance, i.e., that which occurs at the beginnings of words.

 

(So I have to note that my statement "the analogous term to 'alliteration' for vowel sounds is 'assonance'" is not precisely correct.  The term "alliteration" has no analogue that applies to vowel sounds; there is no term that refers specifically to vowel sound repeating at the beginnings of words.)

One could invoke consonance in this case only by referring to the N sounds that follow the initial vowel in both "Anaheim" and "Angels". But no one has done that, so "consonance" is not the term that we need.

 

The assertion was that "Anaheim Angels" is alliterative, on account of both words starting with A.  This claim is wrong on two counts.  First, if it's vowel sounds that you're talking about, then the applicable concept is assonance.  And, second, it's not assonance either, because the vowel sounds that begin "Anaheim" and "Angels" are different, despite both being written with the letter A.

 

In the end, the name "Anaheim Angels" has exactly nothing going for it.

[Ray Lankford]

I say this as a fan: the Padres.

 

It's not evocative of anything to the layperson and even for San Diegans, it's practically ancient history. Serra's presence isn't really felt inthe city in 2016. It also more immediately translates to "Parents" in Spanish, which is a very ridiculous name out of context and I wonder if that limits the team's crossover appeal.

 

There's also the controversial element to the name but that's been discussed so I'll just leave it there.

[The_Admiral]

Maybe I'm giving the layperson too much credit, but "oh, there used to be Spanish monks in California" can't be that tough for people. At worst, people come up with "California is kinda Spanish and Padres is an obviously Spanish word." I don't know what you mean specifically by crossover appeal -- a national following? merchandise worn by non-fans? -- but the Padres have always felt like a rather low-profile, niche sort of operation, at least relative to the Dodgers. Plus, because San Diego is such a transplant city, one picks up the feeling that their sports teams are something kind of reserved for the natives, like the Miami Heat used to be. I think these things would hold whether they were called the Padres, the Seahawks, the Gulls, or perhaps even the Diego Golden Sailors. 

[Ray Lankford]

Padres IS an obviously Spanish word. Like I said, it means "Parents" in 2016 parlance, outside of Robert Rodriguez movies.

[Tygers09]

On 12/9/2016 at 11:36 AM, Ray Lankford said:

Padres IS an obviously Spanish word. Like I said, it means "Parents" in 2016 parlance, outside of Robert Rodriguez movies.

I thought it meant "father" ??

[Cosmic]

2 hours ago, Tygers09 said:

I thought it meant "father" ??

padre = father

madre = mother

padres = either parents or a group of fathers

[chcarlson23]

10 hours ago, Cosmic said:

padre = father

madre = mother

padres = either parents or a group of fathers

Considering their logo is a Friar... I think they're aiming for the latter...