---
title: "Why Are They Called Chivas? The Insults Behind Liga MX Nicknames"
description: "Chivas began as an insult, La Máquina came from a commentator, and Tuzos came from mining. Where Liga MX team nicknames actually came from."
type: "article"
category: "guides"
url: "https://consalsa.app/blog/liga-mx-team-nicknames"
canonical: "https://consalsa.app/blog/liga-mx-team-nicknames"
published: "2026-10-03"
updated: "2026-10-03"
author: "Andrey the Nomad"
site: "ConSalsa.App"
license: "https://consalsa.app/terms#ip"
---

# Why Are They Called Chivas? The Insults Behind Liga MX Nicknames
URL: https://consalsa.app/blog/liga-mx-team-nicknames
Date: 2026-10-03
Updated: 2026-10-03
Category: guides
Keywords: why are they called chivas, origin of liga mx nicknames, la maquina cruz azul origin, tuzos pachuca meaning, xolos tijuana meaning, panzas verdes leon
Summary: Chivas began as an insult, La Máquina came from a commentator, and Tuzos came from mining. Where Liga MX team nicknames actually came from.

Quick answer:
- Liga MX teams often have nicknames fans use as identity shorthand.
- Chivas refers to Guadalajara, Águilas to América, Pumas to UNAM, Xolos to Tijuana, and La Máquina to Cruz Azul.
- Some nicknames are animals, some are history, and some are pure fan culture.
- Use the nickname once you know which team it points to; do not guess from the animal alone.

What you'll learn:
- The most common Liga MX team nicknames and what they point to.
- How nicknames show up in headlines, chants, and group chats.
- Why team shorthand matters for rivalry talk.
- How to ask who someone supports without stepping on a landmine.

Don't sound gringo:
Do not translate a nickname back at a fan. Calling Chivas the Goats in English is not clever, it is the joke Atlas fans made in 1948 and Guadalajara has spent seventy years owning it. Use the Spanish, or use the club name.

Body:

Mexican clubs are almost never called by their names. They are called <mark lang="es-MX">las Chivas</mark>, <mark lang="es-MX">las Águilas</mark>, <mark lang="es-MX">la Máquina</mark>, <mark lang="es-MX">los Tuzos</mark>, and if you do not know which is which, half of every football conversation is missing.

The useful thing is not the list. It is that a surprising number of these started as jokes at the club's expense, and the club kept them.

## Some were insults, some were day jobs, some were the shirt

Broadly there are three sources, and knowing which one you are dealing with tells you how safe the nickname is to use.[^si-mx]

| Nickname | Club | Where it came from |
|---|---|---|
| <mark lang="es-MX">las Chivas</mark> | Guadalajara | a jibe from rival fans |
| <mark lang="es-MX">la Máquina</mark> | Cruz Azul | a commentator, and a cement co-op |
| <mark lang="es-MX">los Tuzos</mark> | Pachuca | the city's mining history |
| <mark lang="es-MX">los Rayados</mark> | Monterrey | the stripes on the kit |
| <mark lang="es-MX">los Xolos</mark> | Tijuana | it is in the club's actual name |
| <mark lang="es-MX">las Águilas</mark> | América | the club badge |
| <mark lang="es-MX">los Panzas Verdes</mark> | León | old kit, green belly |

<figure>
  <img src="/images/blog/optimized/liga-mx-team-nicknames-1-768-59d65596.webp" alt="Close-up of the Chivas de Guadalajara crest on a red and white shirt" loading="lazy" />
  <figcaption>Nobody says the club name. Learn the nicknames or lose the thread. Photo by Esparta, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">CC BY 2.0</a>.</figcaption>
</figure>

## The dictionary knew this already

The word for nickname is <mark lang="es-MX">apodo</mark>, and the definition is quietly damning: a name used for someone ironically or familiarly, which **generally refers to some defect** or quality of theirs.[^dem-apodo]

That is not how English defines a nickname. In Spanish the flaw is written into the word, which is why so many of these started as mockery and why almost none of them sound like branding. A club with an <mark lang="es-MX">apodo</mark> has been named by other people.

The people themselves are <mark lang="es-MX">la afición</mark> — the supporters collectively — and an individual is <mark lang="es-MX">aficionado</mark>, someone with a real inclination toward something.[^dem-aficionado] Not a fan in the shouting sense. Someone with a taste for it.

## Chivas started as a newspaper insult

The story usually told: in 1948, after Guadalajara lost to Tampico, Atlas fans sneered that the red-and-whites had run around the pitch <mark lang="es-MX">como chivas</mark> — like goats. A reporter put the jibe in his match report, and it stuck hard enough that the club never got rid of it.[^si-mx]

Guadalajara did the only sensible thing available and adopted it completely. Today the club is <mark lang="es-MX">el Rebaño Sagrado</mark> — the sacred flock — which is an insult that has been promoted twice.

The word itself is ordinary. A <mark lang="es-MX">chiva</mark> is a female goat, and in the plural it also means somebody's belongings, a pile of odds and ends of little value.[^dem-chiva] Both senses were available to whoever made the joke, and neither was flattering.

<div class="note-card is-tip">
  <span class="note-label">The pattern worth noticing</span>
  <p>An adopted insult is the safest kind of nickname to use, because the fans got there first. You cannot offend a Guadalajara supporter by saying <span lang="es-MX">Chivas</span> — you would have to work much harder than that. The nicknames to be careful with are the ones rival fans invented and the club never accepted.</p>
</div>

## La Máquina, and the ones that came from work

<mark lang="es-MX">La Máquina</mark> is Cruz Azul, and it is layered. The club belongs to a cement cooperative, which is where <mark lang="es-MX">cementeros</mark> comes from. The <mark lang="es-MX">Máquina</mark> part was popularised in the 1970s, when the team won five championships and ran like one — a system of parts doing a job, which is precisely the dictionary sense.[^dem-maquina][^si-mx]

<mark lang="es-MX">Los Tuzos</mark> is Pachuca, and it is the same logic pointed at a different industry. Pachuca is a mining town. A <mark lang="es-MX">tuza</mark> is a small burrowing rodent that wrecks farmland by digging holes and tunnels through it,[^dem-tuza] and comparing men who work underground to the animal that lives underground is not subtle, but it is affectionate.

<mark lang="es-MX">Los Rayados</mark> is the flattest of the lot: Monterrey wear stripes, and have since the 1950s.[^si-mx]

<div id="midpost-newsletter-slot"></div>

<figure>
  <img src="/images/blog/optimized/liga-mx-team-nicknames-2-1400-74c0abad.webp" alt="A match in progress at Estadio Azteca seen from the upper stands" loading="lazy" />
  <figcaption>Cement, mining, stripes and a goat joke. Very little of it is heraldry. Photo by GifTagger, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/">CC BY-SA 2.5</a>.</figcaption>
</figure>

## Xolos is the one that is genuinely a dog

Tijuana is the exception, because the nickname is not a nickname. The club's registered name is Club Tijuana Xoloitzcuintles de Caliente — the dog is in the title.

A <mark lang="es-MX">xoloitzcuintle</mark> is the Mexican hairless dog, an ancient breed, and the dictionary even gives you the pronunciation: <em>sholoitscuíntle</em>.[^dem-xoloitzcuintle] Everyone shortens it to <mark lang="es-MX">Xolos</mark>, including the club.

If you want the animal rather than the football team, the Xolo has its own long history, and it is older than anything else on this page by several thousand years.

## Using one without starting something

<div class="chat-thread">
  <div class="chat-head"><span class="chat-avatar"></span><span>Oficina, lunes</span><span class="chat-meta">the low-risk way in</span></div>
  <ul class="chat-msgs">
    <li class="out"><span class="es" lang="es-MX">¿viste lo de las Chivas el sábado?</span><span class="en">did you see the Chivas game on Saturday?</span></li>
    <li class="in"><span class="es" lang="es-MX">no me lo recuerdes</span><span class="en">don't remind me</span></li>
    <li class="out"><span class="es" lang="es-MX">jaja perdón, ¿tú les vas?</span><span class="en">haha sorry, do you support them?</span></li>
  </ul>
  <p class="chat-read">He led with the nickname and only then asked about allegiance. <strong>Naming the team is neutral; having an opinion about it is not.</strong> The order matters more than the vocabulary.</p>
</div>

<div class="do-dont">
  <div class="dd-col dd-do">
    <p class="dd-title">Safe</p>
    <ul>
      <li>Using the nickname the club uses about itself.</li>
      <li><b lang="es-MX">¿Le vas a las Águilas o a las Chivas?</b> as a question.</li>
      <li>Asking where a nickname comes from. People enjoy this.</li>
      <li>Admitting you had to look it up.</li>
    </ul>
  </div>
  <div class="dd-col dd-dont">
    <p class="dd-title">Risky</p>
    <ul>
      <li>Translating it into English as a joke.</li>
      <li>Using a rival's mocking name for a club to that club's fans.</li>
      <li>Guessing a nickname from the badge animal.</li>
      <li>Repeating something you heard in a chant without knowing what it meant.</li>
    </ul>
  </div>
</div>

For the broader survey of fan shorthand including the national team, [Mexican soccer nicknames](/blog/mexican-soccer-nicknames) covers the whole set, and the América versus Chivas rivalry has its own vocabulary that this page deliberately stays out of.

<figure>
  <img src="/images/blog/optimized/liga-mx-team-nicknames-3-1400-4f088f97.webp" alt="Two men talking, one wearing a Pumas shirt" loading="lazy" />
  <figcaption>Ask where a nickname came from and you will get a story, not a definition. Photo by Milton Martínez / Secretaría de Cultura de la Ciudad de México, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">CC BY 2.0</a>.</figcaption>
</figure>

Eighteen clubs, and most of the names came from somebody being rude about them in print. Once you hear that, the whole vocabulary gets easier to remember.[^ligamx]

*Hero photo by ProtoplasmaKid, [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).*

[^si-mx]: [Sports Illustrated México, de dónde vienen los apodos de los equipos de Liga MX](https://www.si.com/mx/de-chivas-a-panzas-verdes-de-donde-vienen-los-apodos-de-los-equipos-de-liga-mx)
[^dem-apodo]: [Diccionario del español de México, apodo](https://dem.colmex.mx/ver/apodo) - El Colegio de México
[^dem-aficionado]: [Diccionario del español de México, aficionado](https://dem.colmex.mx/ver/aficionado) - El Colegio de México
[^dem-chiva]: [Diccionario del español de México, chiva](https://dem.colmex.mx/ver/chiva) - El Colegio de México
[^dem-tuza]: [Diccionario del español de México, tuza](https://dem.colmex.mx/ver/tuza) - El Colegio de México
[^dem-maquina]: [Diccionario del español de México, máquina](https://dem.colmex.mx/ver/maquina) - El Colegio de México
[^dem-xoloitzcuintle]: [Diccionario del español de México, xoloitzcuintle](https://dem.colmex.mx/ver/xoloitzcuintle) - El Colegio de México
[^ligamx]: [Liga MX, estadística histórica y clubes](https://ligamx.net/cancha/estadisticahistorica) - Liga BBVA MX

FAQ:
Q: Why do Liga MX teams have nicknames?
A: Because the nickname is the identity fans actually use. In conversation, in headlines and in chants, almost nobody says the club's formal name.

Q: Who are Chivas?
A: Guadalajara. The name means goats, and the club is known for a long-standing policy of fielding Mexican players, which is a large part of its identity.

Q: Who are Las Águilas?
A: Club América. The eagles, and the most loved and most disliked club in the country depending on who you ask - the rivalry with Chivas is the biggest in Mexican football.

Q: Who is La Máquina?
A: Cruz Azul. The machine, a nickname from an era of relentless efficiency, which fans have had a complicated relationship with during the long title droughts since.

Q: Who are Los Xolos?
A: Tijuana. Named after the Xoloitzcuintle, the Mexican hairless dog, which makes them one of the few clubs named after a breed rather than a symbol or a color.

Q: Who are the Pumas?
A: UNAM, the national university's club. The university connection is central to how the fanbase sees itself.

Q: Can I just guess a team from its animal?
A: No. Several clubs share animal imagery and some nicknames come from history rather than a mascot, so guessing is a reliable way to say the wrong team's name to the wrong person.

Q: Is it rude to use a rival's nickname?
A: The nicknames themselves are neutral - fans use their own. What carries the edge is the mocking variants, and those are worth understanding before repeating.

Sources:
- Sports Illustrated México, de dónde vienen los apodos de los equipos de Liga MX: https://www.si.com/mx/de-chivas-a-panzas-verdes-de-donde-vienen-los-apodos-de-los-equipos-de-liga-mx
- Diccionario del español de México, apodo: https://dem.colmex.mx/ver/apodo
- Diccionario del español de México, aficionado: https://dem.colmex.mx/ver/aficionado
- Diccionario del español de México, chiva: https://dem.colmex.mx/ver/chiva
- Diccionario del español de México, tuza: https://dem.colmex.mx/ver/tuza
- Diccionario del español de México, máquina: https://dem.colmex.mx/ver/maquina
- Diccionario del español de México, xoloitzcuintle: https://dem.colmex.mx/ver/xoloitzcuintle
- Liga MX, estadística histórica y clubes: https://ligamx.net/cancha/estadisticahistorica

Related words: carnal, compa, a-huevo, no-mames