Why Lionesses?

[EhatBow]

I'll admit I haven't been a fan of women's football. Until recently it's been a lot like watching schoolboys. I felt they needed to develop their own game, like the female tennis player have. In tennis, rather than the same play slower it's a different game and I think the female footballers have achieved that in this competition.

However, we don't have manageresses or actresses anymore, so why Lionesses? Or am I over thinking?

Hopefully it will change now to "European Champions".

Because lionesses is the name given to female lions. Do you want them to be named after the males? Do you see lionesses as lessser? Do you feel the same about 'bull' and 'cow'?

Lioness*

This. Very telling that people still want the male terms to be the default. They are lionesses because they are female.

I think at this point in time it’s important to make that distinction because this is a huge turning point in the history of football and womens sport in general. The nation is celebrating women winning the Euros. Monumental.
in years to come hopefully it’ll be our norm and womens football will be assumed under the umbrella football rather than a sub genre.

I read about it yesterday.
It was a few years back when the men and women were both playing football in big tournaments but the same hash tag was used for both so the women's got lost because the attention on the men's was bigger. So someone decided to give them their own hashtag the lionesses so they could stand out more and be found more easily for people to follow and then it caught on so that's now how they're known

By that reckoning Actress is a name given to female Actors.

Lots of actresses still prefer to be known as such. I like the fact the national team are called the lionesses. It marks them out as spectacularly female. Lionesses are truly exceptional animals so to have adopted them as the nickname is pretty cool.

Actors and actresses work together on films and compete together for awards.

Unlike football.. therefore there is a distinction

Actor is a job title. Actors can be male or female.

Lioness (female lion) is a biological fact.

By that reckoning Actress is a name given to female Actors

Actress/actor doesn't have a fixed meaning. Lion/lioness are the names given to the male and female of that animal, fixed meaning.

Considering lionesses are the ones who do the hunting, killing and general providing in a pride, I’d say it’s kind of fitting over lions anyway.

I think u are overthinking it. Lioness is a female lion - if the squad are fine with it, It’s fine. I’m fine with actress but if someone wants to be referred to as actor, then it is ok too. Lioness behaviour in nature is different from lions and there are definitely features that make it a cool name for a football team (not everything obviously though).

Totally overthinking. The men aren't even informally known as 'The Lions'. So I'd say calling the women 'Lionesses' gives them one over the men. And female lions are the hunters. Male lions just kind of lie around (or that's their pubic image anyway!) waiting for a shag.

Well I still say manageress and actress so why not lioness🤷‍♀️

Some feminising words still sound OK to me - lioness is one of them. Who wants to be a football lion when it's the lionesses who've brought home the prize!

I have no objection to actress but wouldn't use poetess, manageress or conductress. Odd I know.

I think where the sex is irrelevant a word like manager is fine - we should not be making distinctions between male and female managers

With sport sex does matter - they don't play in the mens game

Agree ^

I don't know, i had to pop out to shops yesterday evening (i don't follow football normally) i was amazed at the number of people using the convenience store, lots of cars on the roads too, mostly men in the shop, no one talking about the match.

Euro's final last year and the roads were empty.

I personally don't think men will accept that this amazing win is on par with the mens competitions, just as most football clubs make the women play their matches at the training grounds, miles from anywhere.

Germany has won euro's 8 x but the women still aren't accepted as equals over there.

Love to be proved wrong but my sport is cycling and it doesn't seem to matter what a women achieves in that sport, some dick will come out and have a go.

Not a football fan at all, but I assume it is becuase The males teams are known as British lions . The heraldic symbols of britain are 3 lions. Dates to 1066 at it was William conquerors 2 lions. King Henry II added the 3rd one when he married Eleanor of Aquitaine. So England squads have been emblem on mens tops I think since mid 20th century.
I am not into sexists diminutives but given lionesses do all the hard slog work in prides of lions, and lazy males just make a lot of noise, have sex and steal female food..? Female lions work amazingly as a team, courageous in taking down large animals that could kill them, have strategic thinking and defined roles to do that. On balance I think it is an apt title. But as a superior term to the lions

I am irritated by the fact that ‘lioness’ is a qualification of the word ‘lion’. Lion = Default, adjusted to lioness for female lion. Same with words ending in ‘ette’.

However I see the branding sense, and there is the fact that female lions are fiercer and better hunters than males.

It makes sense when there are wild lions and wild lionesses and wild lion cubs and so on...

I always detested females in employment having a different title which feminised it - but in this case, it's after the animals.

I think it has to be that because if you see 'lion' as a job description for anyone wearing the Three Lions shirt, then you'd need to qualify with male/female of women's/men's when you needed to specify (a bit like acting awards specify)

I think it's boosted the game, because despite the name being lexically derived from 'lion' it's been taken and owned by the women's team and their supporters. And that's good.

It's also considerably catchier than say Diamonds, which is quite well known but doesn't have anything like the same recognition

I think that instead of saying all groups should be known by the male name, we should be looking honestly at ourselves and asking why we feel the 'ess' is less.