I know how sports teams get nicknames in the USA, but can some affable person here tell me how its done in English football? In particular, why is "United" so common - does it go back to the combining of multiple clubs in a city? Also, what's up with all the Rovers/Rangers/Wanderers? I assume it has something to do with traveling to play other cities. All historians encouraged to respond.
Explanations for some club nicknames: FootballCulture.net A lot of clubs were named "United" for that reason but now it has become very popular and teams use the name for no apparent reason.
"United" isn't really a nickname per se, it's part of the club's name. Fewer than half of the Football League's many Uniteds actually formed from a merger--Manchester United, for example, was chosen by the former Newton Heath club when they decided to rename themselves, but they actually considered Manchester Celtic, among others. By and large, British teams named themselves "United" for the same reason that DC United did--because it sounded cool. The actual nicknames--Reds, Gunners, Swans, etc. came about for the same reason that the original American baseball nicknames came about--because sportswriters needed to break up the monotony of referring to a club in the same manner every time. Somewhere along the line, it became an American tradition to include the nickname as part of the team name, something which never caught on in British football.