Each club has its own set of supporters, who will often come up with a nickname that suits the team that they follow. Sometimes, like in the case of Liverpool and Chelsea, the nickname will mostly come down to the colour of kit that the teams play in. On other occasions, it will be more about something from the club’s history. Arsenal fit more into the latter category, in spite of the fact that, like Liverpool, they play in a kit that is mostly red and therefore could also have been nicknamed the Reds. That isn’t their nickname, however, so what is it and where did it come from?
The Gunners
Arsenal are known as ‘the Gunners’, but in order to understand why that is the case, you need to delve into the history of the football club. It was back in 1886 when 15 workers got together and decided that they should form a football club. It is the company that they worked for that helps to point us in the right direction regarding the club’s nickname, thanks to the fact that they worked at the Royal Arsenal munitions factory. The initial name given to the Woolwich-based side was Dial Square, but in the December of 1886, a decision was taken to change this to Royal Arsenal.
The nickname is, as you can probably work out, directly related to the fact that the workers came from the munitions factory, with munitions being used in the likes of cannons and guns. That is also the reason why the club’s crest features a cannon, seeing the club pay homage to where it came from. The club briefly became Woolwich Arsenal, then in 1913, they moved to Highbury in North London and the name was changed to become simply The Arsenal. After that, the definite article was dropped and the club has been known as just Arsenal ever since, but the ties to the club’s history remain.
Why Supporters are Known as Gooners
Given the fact that the cannon has been incorporated into the Arsenal badge since 1888 and the ties to the munitions factory in which those 15 original creators of the club worked, it is reasonably easy to figure out where the ‘Gunners’ nickname comes from. What is not quite so clear is why it is that supporters are known as ‘Gooners’. In the minds of some, it is simply a slight play on the pronunciation of ‘Gunners’, but is that really where it comes from? The exact reasoning behind it isn’t something that has actually ever been nailed down, with numerous different reasons existing.
The club’s own explanation for it is that it has something to do with Herbert Chapman. The legendary manager was born in Yorkshire and enjoyed success as the Huddersfield Town manager before taking over at Arsenal in 1925. He won the club its first-ever silverware when they lifted the FA Cup in 1930, winning the First Division title for the first time the following year before repeating the trick in 1933. An eccentric character known for a practical joke or two, it is believed that he became known as a ‘Gooner’ because of this, with the nickname eventually crossing over to the supporters in general.
Links to Hooliganism?
Although football as a sport has definitely moved on from the age of hooliganism and might like to pretend it never existed, it definitely did. Gangs of violent supporters, often called ‘firms’, were commonplace in the game in the 1970s and 1980s, with Arsenal being no exception to that. The ‘firm’ of Arsenal supporters was known as the ‘Goon Squad’, which soon became the ‘Gooners’. Of course, most people refute the suggestion that the modern-day nickname of ‘the Gooners’ has anything to do with the violent past of a group of supporters of the football club, but are they right?
Without any definitive answer to the question of exactly where the use of ‘Gooners’ came from as a description for the club’s fans, it is impossible to rule out either version of events as true. The most likely answer is that the ‘Gooners’ name actually is simply a mispronunciation of ‘Gunners’, but that isn’t definitely the case any more than either of the other two answers is. Newcastle United supporters, for example, are known as the ‘Toon Army’, with ‘Toon’ being a Geordie pronunciation of ‘town’, so why couldn’t the same thing be true of Arsenal?
Why ‘Gooners’ is Such a Popular Label
If you feel entirely dissatisfied by the above answer and would like a better sense of why the club’s supporters might be known as ‘Gooners’ rather than simply calling them ‘Gunners’, as is the case with the football team, you might want to bear in mind the fact that the first time that the phrase was used in an official matchday programme was back in 1966. This suggests that it is much more likely to have come from either Herbert Chapman or else from a mispronunciation of the word ‘Gooners’, so you can satisfy yourself with that knowledge and refer to it in the future.
Four Gooners, one pretender 🤔
📺 Join Bukayo, Kai, Sharky and Frimpon as they play Guess the Gooner 👇
— Arsenal (@Arsenal) January 27, 2024
What that doesn’t answer, of course, is why ‘Gooners’ has become such a popular term. The reality is that there are tens of millions of Arsenal supporters all over the globe, with many of those not from London, or even England, keen to demonstrate that they understand the culture of the football club. There aren’t many better ways of doing that than by using the same kind of words and language used by the local fans of the club. The result is that ‘Gooners’ has become a more popular term to describe supporters from all around the world than ‘Gunners’, which isn’t likely to change any time soon.