Naming and Symbols
The team historically used the name British Isles. On their 1950 tour of New Zealand and Australia they also adopted the nickname British Lions, first used by British and South African journalists on the 1924 South African tour, after the lion emblem on their ties, the emblem on their jerseys having been dropped in favour of the four-quartered badge with the symbols of the four represented unions. When the team first emerged in the nineteenth century it represented one nation-state, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. After the southern part of Ireland became independent in 1922, the team continued to be termed the British Isles, referring to the British Isles geographic term, rather than national citizenship. To avoid the ambiguity of the term British, and to more emphatically associate the team's identity with both the United Kingdom and Ireland, from the 2001 tour of Australia the name British and Irish Lions has been used. The team is often referred to simply as the Lions.
As the Lions do not represent a single nation-state, they do not have a national anthem. For the 2005 tour to New Zealand the Lions management commissioned a song, "The Power of Four", although it met with little support amongst Lions fans at the matches and was not used on the 2009 Tour.
Read more about this topic: British And Irish Lions
Famous quotes containing the words naming and/or symbols:
“The night is itself sleep
And what goes on in it, the naming of the wind,
Our notes to each other, always repeated, always the same.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Eloquence must be grounded on the plainest narrative. Afterwards, it may warm itself until it exhales symbols of every kind and color, speaks only through the most poetic forms; but first and last, it must still be at bottom a biblical statement of fact.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)