Sheffield Wednesday: How the club got its name and nicknames as team books place in League One play-off final

The football club originates from a cricket team called The Wednesday Cricket Club, which was formed in 1820 and was named after the day of the week that the team played matches more associated with the sound of leather on willow, rather than leather boots kicking a pig’s bladder.

However, in an effort to keep their cricket players in trim during the winter, the football side of the club developed and they also played on Wednesdays because the players were mainly traders and preferred to play in the middle of the week.

Subsequently, The Wednesday Football Club was formed in 1867, turning professional in April 1887 and eventually becoming more commonly known as Sheffield Wednesday Football Club into the middle of the 20th century.

Sheffield Wednesday is proudly one of the oldest football clubs in the world and one of the oldest professional association football clubs in England.

It’s curious name did not just stop with the middle day of the week. It has been reported that it was the first of the two Sheffield clubs to be tagged as the ‘Blades’ which is now the nickname for their closest rivals across the city, Sheffield United FC. No doubt both adopting the name from the city’s heritage with the steel industry.

Wednesday also adopted the nickname ‘Owls’ after the club’s move to its location in Owlerton, Sheffield, where the ground was also originally called Owlerton.

Sheffield United FC fans also tagged Wednesday supporters with the much less flattering nickname ‘pigs’ based on the apocryphal stories that the current ground at Hillsborough, which opened in 1889, was built on a pig sty and that when the club redesigned its badge it looked like a pig.

Whatever name Sheffield Wednesday takes, the club which now competes in League One - the third tier of the English Football League – has enjoyed success having won the old Division One four times in 1903, 1904, 1929 and 1930, and it boasts three FA Cup titles from 1898, 1907 and 1935, and one Football League Cup title from 1991.