Spion Kop

The word for a Liverpool fan comes from a hill in KwaZulu-Natal where Liverpool men died in 1900.

The Battle of Spion Kop in January 1900 was a costly British defeat in the Second Boer War, and many of the dead came from Lancashire and Liverpool regiments. When Anfield's new banked terrace opened in 1906 it was called the Spion Kop, a name the local journalist Ernest Edwards is usually credited with. Kopite is the demonym for the people who stand on it, and the pattern spread to banked ends at grounds across Britain.