How did the club get its name “Tottenham Hotspur” ?
The club was formed by a group of cricketers in 1882 as Hotspur FC and the prefix Tottenham was adopted three years later to avoid confusion with a team called London Hotspur. Tottenham, based in the district of Haringey, was originally the village of a man called Totta. The name Hotspur was chosen because of the fiery reputation of Shakespeare’s Harry Hotspur, a character in his play “Henry IV Part 1”. Harry was based on a 14th century ancestor called Sir Henry Percy of the aristocratic Northumberland family who owned large tracts of land in the Tottenham area in the 1880s and after whom the nearby Northumberland Avenue is named. The family were believed to have lived close to the ground in Percy House. Henry is reported to have been killed in battle in Shrewsbury in 1403. He acquired his surname because of his frequent use of spurs when riding.
