Why do Americans add "The" in front of a team name, but the British do not?

Question

I'm not certain that there is an answer to this one:

Americans refer to our teams as The

Example: The New York Yankees

The British in my experience do not.

Example: Manchester United

I know that occasionally the British will throw in a the, such as The Arsenal, but I believe this is a nod to the actual Woolwich Arsenal.

We also tend to pluralize our teams, where I don't believe the British do this typically. (Not certain on that one . . . A bit of help from across the pond would be appreciated.)

Could the pluralization be compelling the usage of The?

Of note, the only time The gets truncated from an American team name is when it is used as an adjective. e.g. Legendary New York Yankees pitcher Mariano Rivera retired this past season.

Answer 1

As David M suggests it is due to pluralization.

Americans tend to name their teams in reference to the collection of players on the team as a group. "The Yankees" or "The Red Sox" references the collection of players and managers who make up the team. A player is a Yankee, or a Red Sox, and the collection of players are "The Yankees".

European football team names tend to reference the club as a single entity. "Chelsea" is the name of the football club, the club is considered a single thing that exists independently to the collection of players, staff, etc.

But people will often refer to "the blues", in reference to the current Chelsea players of the team when they want to talk about the collection of players.

Answer 2

I think a big difference is: all of the English football team names implicitly or explicitly end with "Football Club." That is, the full name of "Manchester United" is actually "Manchester United Football Club" (sometimes "Manchester United F.C.").

There is no equivalent for American team names. "The Cincinnati Reds" are not "The Cincinnati Reds Baseball Club". It's just "The Cincinnati Reds".

If there is ever a need to disambiguate Liverpool (the place) from Liverpool (the team), you could say "Liverpool football club". If there were ever a need to verbally disambiguate between giant people living in San Francisco, and San Francisco Giants (a baseball team), we would tack on "The" - "The San Francisco Giants." If you needed extra disambiguation, you might tack on "... the baseball team", but it wouldn't really be a part of the team's name.

For the curious, here's a list of some American Baseball team names along with a list of some UK Football Club team names:

The New York Yankees, The Philadelphia Phillies, The Boston Red Sox, The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, The Chicago White Sox, The Chicago Cubs, The New York Mets, The San Francisco Giants, The Minnesota Twins, The Detroit Tigers, The St. Louis Cardinals, The Los Angeles Dodgers, The Texas Rangers, The Colorado Rockies, The Atlanta Braves, The Seattle Mariners, The Milwaukee Brewers, The Baltimore Orioles, The Cincinnati Reds, The Houston Astros, The Oakland Athletics, The Washington Nationals, The Toronto Blue Jays, The Miami Marlins, The Arizona Diamondbacks, The Cleveland Indians, The San Diego Padres, The Pittsburgh Pirates, The Tampa Bay Rays, The Kansas City Royals

Arsenal (the Gunners), Aston Villa (The Villa), Chelsea (The Blues, Pensioners?), Everton (The Toffees), Fulham (The Cottagers), Liverpool (The Reds?), Manchester City (also The Blues), Manchester United (the Red Devils), Newcastle United (the Magpies), Norwich City (the Canaries), Queens Park Rangers, Reading (the Royals), Sunderland (the Black Cats), Tottenham Hotspur (the Spurs), West Ham United (the Hammers), Wigan Athletic, Birmingham City, Blackpool (the Seasiders), Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Brighton and Hove Albion (the Seagulls), Bristol City, Burnley, Cardiff City (the Red dragons, used to be the Bluebirds), Charlton Athletic, Coventry City (the Sky Blues), Crystal Palace (the Eagles, used to be the Glaziers), Derby County (the Rams), Huddersfield Town, Hull City (the Tigers), Ipswich Town (the Tractor Boys) , Leeds United, Leicester City (the Foxes), Middlesbrough, Millwall, Nottingham Forest, Peterborough United (the Posh), Sheffield Wednesday (the Owls), Watford (the Hornets), Wolverhampton Wanderers (the Wolves).

And a bit of citation from "The IT Crowd": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWJIQm9qH-w

Answer 3

Often, with football teams, where the team nickname is used the definite article is included. E.g. Tim Howard (the USA national goalkeeper) plays for the Toffees (Everton).

The Canaries (Norwich) are currently placed above the Potters (Stoke), the Baggies (West Bromwich Albion), the Eagles (Crystal Palace),the Black Cats (Sunderland) and the Red Dragons (Cardiff).

The Gunners(Arsenal) are second in the table to the Pensioners (Chelsea). The Magpies (Newcastle) have a slight edge on the Saints (Southampton).

Answer 4

The difference is cause by the fact that the two examples that you gave are not comparable . . . the American team that you mentioned includes the team nickname and the British does not, and that is what causes the difference in the use of "The".

An accurate comparison would be:

US: The New York Yankees
UK: The Manchester United Red Devils

. . . or . . .

US: New York
UK: Manchester United

Each country uses the same format when referring to a team the same way, but it may be that, in the UK, it is more common to refer to a team by their city/club name than by their nickname. In the States, it is relatively equal, but, in a number of cases where one city has two teams in the same league (e.g., the New York Yankees/the New York Mets, the New York Giants/the New York Jets, the Chicago White Sox/the Chicago Cubs), you need to include the team nickname to clarify which team you are talking about.

Answer 5

I'm not certain there's an answer either, but here's a counter-argument: notable teams on either side of the pond have different names that differ in whether they merit a 'the'.

Regarding the examples that you chose:
- Manchester is a place, 'yankee' is a noun. Proper-noun place names usually are not prepended with a 'the' ("going up to Boston this weekend"), where regular nouns often are ("the beach"/"the postman"). For reference, a brief trip to Wikipedia shows some football team names having a definitive article ("The New Saints"), but it seems like a lot of those teams are named after locations, thus not needing one.

Regarding pluralization:

• The Miami Heat
• The Utah Jazz (what is up with that name anyway? music <=> sports?)

College teams are also referred to by school name (and thus by location name) often:

• San Diego State beat out Utah State the other day.

All of this to say…what trend are we talking about? Maybe you could argue for a trend in the USA for professional teams being named after mascots (or something of that nature), where many teams in the UK are named for places. I'd be curious to hear other thoughts about this.

A final point: musical ensembles (admittedly not the subject of your question) sort of buck any trend you could come up with anyway, at least when it comes to putting names to groups of people who do one thing together.

Answer 6

American English focuses on formal agreement of nouns and verbs, whereas British English considers notional agreement, i.e., the meaning more than the grammar. Americans would say, "our government is letting the troops down." Brits would say, "our government are letting the troops down."

Brits treat collective nouns differently, most noticeably with sports teams. That's why the exclamation, "Arsenal are on fire!" makes total sense to the British.

Rather than naming each player followed with "are on fire," they simply use the team name with no article to imply the collection of individuals.

American English misses this sense by treating collective nouns as strictly singular, e.g., "Norway is winning the competition." British English uses the notional form: "Norway are winning the competition."

Answer 7

I think as you indicate in your examples, there's a disparity in how we name our teams on either side of the pond.

In America, most teams are not a singular collective noun such as United or Arsenal, as much as they tend to be named for a multiple of a single noun, in such a way as using the definite article differentiates them from others, e.g. bears will maul you, but the Bears will tackle you.

I'd argue it's less about how we refer to them, but more on how we name them, though there are I think a few exceptions in American sports.

Answer 8

It's not just with sports teams, is it?

British might say, "I went to hospital". Americans would say "I went to the hospital".

American English would not have received any of the language "reforms" that occurred after the American Revolution. If you want to track this down, I'd look at those reforms to see if it touches upon this language aspect. Otherwise it's probably a drift in dialect, but even then it could be tracked down to some period.