Name Origins and Nicknames
Sheffield Wednesday are the only English League club with a day of the week in their name. The club was initially a cricket club named The Wednesday Cricket Club after the day of the week on which they played their matches. The footballing side of the club was established to keep the team together and fit during the winter months.
The club was formerly known as "The Wednesday Football Club" until 1929, when the club was officially renamed "Sheffield Wednesday Football Club" under the stewardship of manager Robert Brown. The club is sometimes still referred to as simply 'The Wednesday' or more commonly just 'Wednesday'. However the name Sheffield Wednesday dates back as far as 1883: the former ground at Olive Grove had the name Sheffield Wednesday painted on the stand roof.
At the start of the 20th century, when a player presented them with an owl mascot to honour their stadium at Owlerton, adjacent to Hillsborough, the club became known as "The Owls" and over the last few seasons also been known between fellow fans as "The Massive", after their comprehensive fan base.
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Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)