From: 03:15:38 GMT
Date: 24 May 2003 18:56
Subject: Go Tee Pee, Jokers, and Other Bad Finnish Club Names (was: Blimey, no word on South Africa-England then? [R])

Jouni Honkala  did this:

>KooTeePee is basically how you read aloud "KTP", K = "koo", T = "tee",
>P = "pee". The club was set up to the remains of "Kotkan TP", which
>went bankrupt having been relegated from the league in 2001. I have no
>idea were they came up with that clever name ;)

Sadly, that abomination is far from the only bad club name in Finnish
football, though it's arguably the worst of the current lot. Below
I've ranked the clubs in the Veikkausliiga - "Betting League", another
godawful name - based on their names.

1.) Helsingin Jalkapalloklubi (HJK). How to come up with a good name
for a Finnish football club? Start with the name of the town in
genitive form followed by the words "football club" _in Finnish_. It's
that easy.

2.) Kuopion Palloseura (KuPS). My personal favourites. I'd have placed
them at the top, but teams with the same name compete at other sports,
which in my opinion detracts from the overall effect.

3.) Myllykosken Pallo -47 (MyPa). The name's okay in Finnish, even if
an English translation would sound odd. The "-47" bit will sound
better and better as years go by.

4.) FF Jaro JS. Again, perfectly okay. Having the "football club" bit
in both Swedish and Finnish isn't perfect, but it's understandable.

5.) FC Haka. They'd have had a shot at number one without the nowadays
infuriatingly common "FC". Such a shame.

6.) FC TPS Turku (TPS). Minus points for redundancy. The T in TPS
stands for Turku and the PS for "ball club"; FC TPS Turku is the ATM
machine of football club names.

7.) FC Hämeenlinna. So very bland. No history. But hey, at least it's
better than their previous name, the Soviet style "K-Team" where the K
was a reference to a supermarket chain.

8.) FC Lahti. So very bland. No history. Minus points for discarding
the much better names Reipas and Kuusysi in favour of this boring one.

9.) AC Vantaan Allianssi (Allianssi). With a few decades of history
behind it, the name Vantaan Allianssi would seem like a good name for
a football club. The lack of history hurts the name a little, and the
AC bit just makes it that much worse.

10.) Tampere United. I guess FC Tampere wasn't bad enough for these
guys. To make the name that extra bit more ridiculous, they had to
tack on the tacky United.

11.) FC Jazz. Okay, so they've been around for awhile with the same
name. It's still retarded.

12.) FC Inter Turku (Inter). Inferiority complexes'R'Us. Inter would
be an amusing name for a pub team, but on this level it doesn't work
at all.

13.) FC Jokerit. Here's where we cross the line from "bad" to
"offensive". Jokerit were named after a frigging ice hockey team in
the hope of nabbing a few fans from their more popular namesakes.
Urgh.

14.) FC KooTeePee. Why? Why, why, why? Who came up with this name, and
what horrible accident destroyed the part of his brain that governed
good taste?


A few dishonourable mentions to clubs outside the Veikkausliiga:

* FC United (from the women's league). Quite possibly the world record
holder in blandness. Can a name get more derivative?

* FC Viikingit (from the first division). Stupid, cartoonish, and
historically inaccurate - you can't ask for more than that in a bad
club name.

-- 
 Ari 

---------------------------------------------------------------

From: 03:15:38 GMT
Date: 25 May 2003 13:20
Subject: Re: Go Tee Pee, Jokers, and Other Bad Finnish Club Names

anders t  did this:

 [FF Jaro JS]

>FF = "Fotbollsförening" ("Fussball (Vereinigung|Verein)")
>FK = "Fotbollsklubb" ("Football Club")

JS stands for "Jalkapalloseura", which is indeed Finnish for
"Fotbollsförening". The Swedish word "förening" translates to Finnish
as "seura", which means something like a society, an organisation, or
a club, depending on the context.

Perhaps those translations aren't transitive, but coming up with a
good English translation for "Fotbollsförening" without using the word
"club" is difficult. "Football Society" brings to mind Brazil,
"Football Organisation" formations.

-- 
 Ari