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What is a badge in any case? It’s a complicated question to answer.

Perhaps your football club’s most ubiquitous symbol is a storied, heraldic design harking back to the local coat of arms or a sleek, modern design dreamt up to look effortlessly slick emblazoned on modern sportswear.

But why is there a tree? Or a bee? Or a devil?

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This week, The Athletic is breaking down the details hiding in plain sight and explaining what makes your club badge.

In their 137-year history, Southampton Football Club have had only two crests and made six reconfigurations to their badge.

While the trend is for crests to become simpler — largely using primary colours — Southampton stand above those unuttered rules and, over time, have added the whole paint palette.

Green, gold, blue and black all accompany the deep-seated, inevitable, red and white. The emblem itself is a lot more intricate and perhaps more intriguing than most badges nowadays, with the nuances within the design a representation of the city’s history.

It was not always like that. Like many clubs at their inception, Southampton initially used the city’s coat of arms, which featured solely red and white colours and a shield with Hampshire roses on it. The lettering “SFC”, used as the only differentiator, came below.

This remained the case for the next 89 years until the club organised a competition in 1974, with a view to revamping the crest. In case you were wondering, a gentleman named Rolland Parris, a graphic designer and Southampton supporter, would end up sketching the emblem.

The new crest took inspiration from the club’s religious roots after it was formed in 1885 by members of the St Mary’s church — hence the “Saints” nickname, a somewhat obvious clue. At the time, newspapers referred to the team as St Mary’s YMA (Young Men’s Association).

Parris’s design introduced a golden halo sat atop a football (rather self-explanatory) to accentuate Southampton’s history with the Church of England, while the red and white scarf that runs beneath is used to show the club’s colours and relationship with supporters.

As an aside, Southampton’s predominant colours were famously the inspiration of Athletic Bilbao, whose original strip was just white prior to 1909. That year, Bilbao student Juan Elorduy was in Southampton and decided to pick up 50 Southampton shirts before travelling home. By 1910, the Spanish club had begun wearing their now familiar cloned colours from the south coast.

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The single tree on the crest, comprising black bark with green leaves, symbolises the New Forest and Southampton Common, where the club is situated.

Arguably the most pertinent aspects of the emblem are the two blue waves below the tree. In terms of importance, they carry significant cultural meaning to the city.

The stylised waves represent Southampton’s prominence as a shipping port and dock area, as well as its fabled, storied history with the coastline.

In the Middle Ages, Southampton was the home of England’s shipbuilding industry, constructing boats that set sail from the Mayflower to the United States. Ships would hold those migrating overseas, with the dependency on the town (it only became a city in 1964) exponentially growing during the Victorian era. In turn, Southampton’s population increased with it.

In 1912, a third of the RMS Titanic’s passengers were Sotonians leaving from the port, many never to return. During the Second World War, Southampton became one of the main targets in Germany’s efforts to disrupt Britain’s naval authority and efficiency in shipping goods in and out of the country.

Then there is the white rose, enlarged and standalone in comparison to the ones that appear on the city’s coat of arms. To avoid confusion with those in Yorkshire and the Wars of the Roses, the flower is also the symbol of Hampshire.

The badge remains the one in operation to this day, albeit with a few minor refinements. The first came in 1997 and kept all the key elements but sharpened the contours, making them more sophisticated. The colours became deeper and more striking, with the football — previously white and plain — adding black and therefore boasting a more traditional pattern. The lettering at the bottom was handed a modern spruce-up.

Southampton stuck with the crest into the 21st century. It was only after 16 managers, two relegations, one administration and a Jan Poortvliet that the next discernible change came, in 2010, in homage to the club’s 125th anniversary.

The occasion was royally marked, with the crest remaining intact but trimmed gold. The football holding the halo made way for a red sphere and white lettering “125” on it. The date of their inception and the year (1885-2010) were either side of the emblem. They also played in the kit that bore the same style as their first one, with a red sash cutting through the all-white shirt.

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Promotion achieved and the landmark year celebrated, Southampton restored their traditional logo the following season, almost identical to the redesigned crest from 1997. As the themes of history would suggest, it was once again given a contemporary uplift, with the letters emboldened and contours refreshed.

It has stayed that way ever since as Southampton refuse to follow the trend of badge simplification. From the shape to the colour to the subtler aspects of the emblem, it has perfectly captured the city’s history for decades and will do so for years to come.

(Photos: Getty Images; graphic: Sam Richardson)

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