Names
Many clubs are named after their home town or district. A few clubs are named after the topography of their region, such as the Alpine Bicycle Club of Golden, Colorado. Some have no connection, such as the Acme Wheelers in south Wales, Zenith CC in Leicester, Gemini BC in north-west Kent. Some clubs are just named after the behaviour of the members — VC Daft.
Some call themselves Road Clubs or use a foreign title such as Coureurs or Velo. Examples in Britain are Warrington Road Club, Leicestershire Road Club and Archer RC); Clayton Velo, Yorkshire Velo, Rugby Velo, Thames Velo, VC Elan, VC Londres or Velo Sport Jersey all use foreign names that reflect the origins of cycle-racing in France. Another common title is Wheelers - for example, Huddersfield Star Wheelers.
Some names have roots in political or social movements. The National Clarion Cycling Club spread socialist ideas by bicycle in the late 1890s and early 1900s. The name remains - Crewe Clarion, Fenland Clarion, Nottingham Clarion, Bury Clarion, North Cheshire Clarion, etc.) - but the politics have gone. Other names reflect historical religious allegiance, such as Manchester St Christopher's Catholic Cycling Club) or jobs: RAF CC, Northumbria Police CC, GB Fire Service Road Team, Army Cycling Union. Others evoke the wandering nature of cycling - '34 Nomads, Altrincham Ravens, Lewes Wanderers, Colchester Rovers - or an aspiration: Norwood Paragon, Sheffield Phoenix, Dulwich Paragon.
The early 21st century has also seen the development of internet-based clubs (e.g.: i-Team.cc, and Team Internet).
Read more about this topic: Cycling Club
Famous quotes containing the word names:
“The instincts of merry England lingered on here with exceptional vitality, and the symbolic customs which tradition has attached to each season of the year were yet a reality on Egdon. Indeed, the impulses of all such outlandish hamlets are pagan still: in these spots homage to nature, self-adoration, frantic gaieties, fragments of Teutonic rites to divinities whose names are forgotten, seem in some way or other to have survived mediaeval doctrine.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“Men have sometimes exchanged names with their friends, as if they would signify that in their friend each loved his own soul.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In a time of confusion and rapid change like the present, when terms are continually turning inside out and the names of things hardly keep their meaning from day to day, it’s not possible to write two honest paragraphs without stopping to take crossbearings on every one of the abstractions that were so well ranged in ornate marble niches in the minds of our fathers.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)