Opinion
Editorial: A rose by any other name could hide a painful sting
A caller to the office this week was less than pleased about the lettering going on at the Yellow Jacket Stadium pressbox.
Someone made the decision that it should be Yellowjacket Stadium, and so it was lettered.
Some of the tradition-minded in our community already dislike the nickname that’s been bestowed on the venerable stadium — The Rock — and it’s highly unlikely they will be pleased with the new lettering on the pressbox.
And they’ll have to contend with the sides of the pressbox bearing the message “Welcome to ‘The Rock.’ ”
Now, this is hardly a matter of national security and lives probably won’t be significantly altered by the outcome either way.
But we can understand the problem. Nothing irritates readers more than seeing their names misreported or misspelled. And, as best as we can ascertain the stadium’s name has been Yellow Jacket Stadium for decades.
We don’t know why it was changed or who changed it.
Perhaps the sentiment behind the change is that the insect in question is a yellowjacket so the team name should reflect that spelling.
But no less an authority than Texas AgriLife Extension spells the bug’s name as two words. If you can’t trust an Aggie on the name of a critter, who can you trust?
The architecture of the stadium lends itself to the nickname, and we take it that the name is intended to inspire a certain amount of dread in opponents, as in this is the place where you will be crushed.
And certainly Sean Connery’s line in the movie “The Rock,” “Gentlemen, welcome to The Rock,” has a certain ring to it.
The Rock, in that case, was an impregnable fortress prison from which few escaped, none of them unscathed. Again, the intimidation factor would be at work when the phrase is applied to the stadium.
But it’s a nickname, not the name, and in formal uses it probably should be avoided.
We’ll let the community hash out with the school district the permanency of the current lettering.
But we here have decided that the nickname should only be used in direct quotations, and we will follow precedent and tradition in referring to the arena as Yellow Jacket Stadium.
This editorial is the opinion of the Cleburne Times-Review
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