Football clubs often have nicknames, with the polite ones given to them by their own supporters, and less polite ones handed down by rival sets of fans. More often than not, the nickname is an easy one to understand, such as Liverpool being called ‘the Reds’ because of the kit that they wear when playing their matches. Other times, the nickname can appear to be a little bit more vague, like the way Liverpool’s Merseyside rivals Everton are called ‘the Toffees’. In the case of Tottenham Hotspur, the club actually boasts two nicknames, being referred to as both ‘Spurs’ and ‘the Lilywhites’.
Spurs
As a football club, Tottenham Hotspur was founded in 1882, originally missing the ‘Tottenham’ and being called simply Hotspur Football Club. That is thanks to the fact that the club was formed by a group of schoolboys who were members of Hotspur Cricket Club, wanting to find something to do with their time in the winter when cricket wasn’t played.
It was two years later that the club’s name was altered in order to add the ‘Tottenham’, which was done in order to ensure that there was no mix-up with another club in London called Hotspur. It isn’t quite that simple, though.
The entire reason that both the cricket club and then the football club had ‘Hotspur’ in their name in the first place was as a tribute to Sir Henry Percy, who became known as ‘Harry Hotspur’ thanks to his speed and skill on horseback in battles. The Scots, who were the enemy in those days, felt that he could only ride that quickly by having ‘hot spurs’ on his boots, which caused the horse to run faster.
The odd thing is that he was actually from the north of the country, born in Northumberland in the May of 1364, but his reputation was known throughout the country.
The Lilywhites
You might think that the explanation behind the club being known as the Lilywhites is an easy one to understand, given the fact that the team plays in a white kit. You would be correct for that assumption, with the side having played in white as their home kit since 1898. The more interesting question to ask is why they play in white. It was in the latter part of the 19th century that one of the dominant forces in English football, Preston North End, went unbeaten domestically during the entirety of the 1898-1899 campaign. The result was that Spurs chose to copy their home kit colours.
It wasn’t until the middle of the 1960s that the club began wearing all-white kits during European matches. You would be forgiven for thinking that it was for an aesthetic reason, but in reality it was because the manager at the time, Bill Nicholson, realised that having his players line up in an all-white kit would make the players easier to see under floodlights. It was a decision that paid off, with Tottenham winning the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup in the 1962-1963 campaign before going on to win the UEFA Cup for the first time less than a decade later, winning it again in 1984 and then for a third time in 2025.
Just Don’t Call Them ‘Tottenham’
In the February of 2025, something rather odd happened as far as Tottenham Hotspur were concerned. Those of a more discerning nature who were sat watching the London club play against Manchester United on Sky Sports noticed that the starting XI for the match was referred to as ‘Spurs’, whilst Ange Postecoglou was given the banner of ‘Tottenham Hotspur Head Coach’. If you had been watching when they played Everton on the 19th of January, however, you will have noticed that Postecoglou was called the ‘Tottenham Head Coach’ and the starting XI was that of ‘Tottenham’.
That is because the hierarchy of the football club had sent an email around journalists and broadcasters on the tenth of February informing them that the club was embarking on a ‘Naming Update’, which said that the club wanted to be known as ‘Tottenham Hotspur’ in the first instance, with the nickname being ‘Spurs’. A request was made that they were not referred to as ‘Tottenham’ alone. From that point onwards, broadcasters, journalists and the Premier League itself made sure to either refer to the club by its full name or else its nickname, but never only ‘Tottenham’.
If you’re wondering why on earth the club had decided to be so anal about it, it’s down to the fact that Tottenham is the name of the area in which the club is based, but it is not the name of the club itself. The club’s position has been not to refer to itself as just ‘Tottenham’ since 2011, but it was in the November of 2024 that a ‘remastered brand identity’ was revealed, with one paragraph of their ‘Brand Playbook’ saying, “In a world full of Uniteds, Citys and Rovers, there is only one Hotspur’. The guidance given out around the issue was an attempt to underline this fact.