Names for sports teams

[Fraggle Rocker]

Sorry, I'm sure this is one for anglophones. You probably even have to be American to get most of them. If you actually know how to pronounce some of these names correctly, it will ruin the joke.

Some of the winners of this week's word contest in the Washington Post: Think of a name for a new sports team in a not-so-well-known city.

The Acme Flattened Coyotes (Canada)
The Awsim Dudes (Egypt)
The Baotou Authorities (China)
The Bath Ackwards (England)
The Buntum Gastroenterologists (Burma)
The Butcombe Fastidious Groomers (England)
The Cinderford Pintos (England)
The Durn Teutons (Austria)
The Hay Ewes (Australia)
The Kokand Bulls (Uzbekistan)
The Liverpool Organ Donors (well okay that is a pretty well known city)
The Lviv Roman Numerals (Ukraine)
The Nijerk Reactions (Holland)
The Nogota Prayers (Japan)
The Norong Answers (Australia)
The Suffren Succotash (Canada)
The Townsville Redundants (Australia)
The Wingham Flying Pigs (England)

 

[Captain Kremmen]

You must have to be American. I'm British and I get about seven out of the eighteen. What's the Wingham flying Pigs one about?

 

[phonetic]

Hehe.

Is there a name for this kind of thing, Fraggle?

I get these ones -
The Acme Flattened Coyotes (Canada)
The Awsim Dudes (Egypt)
The Bath Ackwards (England)
The Buntum Gastroenterologists (Burma)
The Butcombe Fastidious Groomers (England)
The Kokand Bulls (Uzbekistan)
The Liverpool Organ Donors (well okay that is a pretty well known city)
The Lviv Roman Numerals (Ukraine)
The Nijerk Reactions (Holland)
The Nogota Prayers (Japan)
The Norong Answers (Australia)
The Suffren Succotash (Canada)

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

You must have to be American. I'm British and I get about seven out of the eighteen. What's the Wingham flying Pigs one about?

You're pronouncing it "Wingum." We Americans see that and say Wing Ham. We see Butcombe as Butt-Comb. You have to be American to know about the "Coyote and Roadrunner" cartoons; the roadrunner always receives a shipment from the Acme Anvil Company, opens it up, and drops a gigantic anvil onto the coyote off a hundred-foot Utah cliff. Same with "Sufferin' Succotash," an epithet Daffy Duck always says in another Warner Bros. cartoon series. The Pinto was a little car that Ford made--very poorly--in the 1970s. The gasoline tank was set so far back that if the car was involved in a rear-end accident it would simply explode: Cinder Ford. Unlike the "unintended acceleration" scam that almost ruined Audi in the U.S. and is the reason new cars have so many interlocks they're almost impossible to start at all, this one was real and a number of people got burned up in smashed Pintos.

Is there a name for this kind of thing, Fraggle?

No, it's just the newspaper's weekly "Style Invitational" reader contest. It's always about words. I've posted a few others over the years, before we had a subforum for linguistics.

I get these ones-

Some of the ones you don't:

Bow to authority
We used to say "Darn tootin' " the way you kids say "Damn straight," and cowboys pronounce it "durn"
Surely you get "Hey You"
Towns-ville is a redundant name