I’d disagree about the color words (perfectly valid substantives), and the same with “Nationals.” Also “Cardinals,” in the sense that they are red birds (or bunch of elderly celibate religious men, grammatically fine but weird for a sports team).
But basically you’re right: lots of this in sports. I’ll add the Fighting Irish and perhaps the Maple Leafs. I still say it’s wrong, wrong, wrong, even if it is quite a venerable tradition. So there.
In many cases, such as the St. Louis Cardinals and the Arizona Cardinals, began using “Cardinals” as a reference to the color, not the birds or the religious figures.
If colors and adjectives like “Nationals” are perfectly valid substantives, then so is “Celtics.”
Yeah, really. English orthography is much more “anything goes” than either Irish or Scottish Gaelic.
No, because there is no other noun associated with the color words. “Red” is both an adjective and a substantive. With “Celtics” there is “Celts,” so “Celtic” can’t also be a substantive because that role is already taken; with “Athletics” there is “Athletes.” (“Nationals” is a bit of a gray area.) That’s the logic, anyway; I can agree to disagree.
True. My daughter is currently learning “*i *before e…except when it’s not.”
I was kidding before and I fear I sounded like an ignorant “why the extra “u”??” American-centric crank. Sorry.
I have to say, too—I’ve known how to spell Siobhan/Siobhain forever. So when a woman at work told me that was her name, I started writing it down immediately…only for her to correct me and spell it “Shavonne”. I prefer the Gaelic spelling.
My great-grandfather (a native Irish speaker) once told me that shortly after the fall of the tower of Babel, an Irishman visited the area, listened to all the new languages, and picked out the parts he liked best to make a new tongue.
Then he went home, drank a gallon of whiskey, and laid out Irish as it is today.