Grasshopper

GC owes its crest animal and name to the green Grasshopper. We can only speculate about the origin of this choice.

However, GC co-founder Tom E. Griffith was unlikely to have been referring to the animal itself when naming the club. In fact, it is highly likely that the adventurous Brit was not thinking of the migratory locusts (Locusta mi-gratoria), which leave their breeding grounds in swarms of millions at frequent intervals and cause immense damage as a rumbling cloud on their often thousands of kilometers long journey. It is more likely that Griffith was particularly impressed by one fact about the harmless species of native grasshoppers (Acrididae): their powerful rear legs allow these grasshoppers to jump up to 200 times their body length. And Tom E. Griffith and his equally optimistic co-founders in Zurich wanted to make long jumps with the Grasshopper Club Zurich.

However, the most credible explanation for the thought processes behind the Grasshopper baptism is that the GC pioneers wanted to run and jump around in sporting competition. They did this purposefully on the grass, because in those days in our part of the world, games were not played on top-flat terrain with a springy carpet of grass, but (and with just as much fun) on actual meadows. _{Extract from the anniversary publication «50 Jahre Grasshopper-Club Zürich (1886-1936)»}

Another plausible possibility could be the series of British clubs on which the GC founders were inspired by. For example, there was the rugby club "Rugby Club Preston Grasshoppers", founded in 1869.  _{Extract from the book «Grasshoppers - Fussball in Zürich seit 1886 (www.gc-buch.ch)»}