Published June 18, 2010

The Hot Word, a blog on Dictionary.com, explains where Boston’s NBA team got its name:

The Celts were various peoples who lived across Europe when the Roman Empire was expanding. The common factor between the tribal groups was the Celtic family of languages. The region where Celtic languages still have the strongest presence is Scotland, Wales, part of France, and Ireland.

NBA.com gives the following reason for how the Boston Celtics got their name: Team founder Walter Brown thought of an earlier basketball team from New York named the Celtics and figured since Boston had a large Irish population, the Celtics was a great name to use again. The moniker stuck.

As many commenters have noted, the pronunciation of “Celtic” is a messy thing. While we say the Boston “Celtics” with the C sounding like an S, when one talks about “Celtic” language or anything that refers to Celtic culture, the C sounds like a K. But if we talk about “the Celts” to describe the ancient people of that name, the C sounds like an S. Yet another demonstration that language can be as inconsistent as the world it describes.

Also of note: why LA’s team is named after a water body you don’t really find in Southern California.