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The Mexican team Club León's home stadium is unofficially known as the "Nou Camp," which is also the name of the stadium in Spain where FC Barcelona play their home games. However, "Nou Camp" has no meaning in Spanish and I don't believe there are many Catalan speakers in Mexico so I was surprised to encounter a seemingly-Catalan name.

The relevant entry in Spanish-language Wikipedia makes an attempt at explaining where the name came from but it doesn't quite make sense. Here's my translation:

Contrary to what people believe and because of a mistranslation from Spanish, the stadium was erroneously named "Nou Camp", which is the name (in Catalan) of FC Barcelona's stadium. People in Barcelona (?!) started calling their stadium "Camp Nou" (which means "new field" in Spanish), and that's the name that was eventually chosen.

Even if the word Barcelona should be León, I still can't think of what sort of translation error would lead to a Catalan name for a Mexican stadium.

For posterity, here's the Spanish text I made my translation from:

En contra de lo que la gente cree y por una mala traducción del español, se le dio el erróneo nombre de "Nou Camp", que coincidía con el del FC Barcelona, cuyo nombre sí proviene del catalán. La gente en Barcelona empezó a llamarle a su estadio Camp Nou, que en español es Campo Nuevo, y al final fue el nombre elegido.

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    The stadium is officially named "Estadio León," and "Nou Camp" is a nickname. I wonder if there were a lot of Barcelona fans in León when they built the stadium in the 1960s, and the campo nuevo (new field) was essentially nicknamed after the stadium in Barcelona. – Ben Miller Feb 10 '14 at 15:29
  • @BenMiller Why don't you post that as an answer? – Jacob Jan Tuinstra Jun 30 '14 at 11:42
  • @JacobJanTuinstra Because it's only an observation and a guess. – Ben Miller Jun 30 '14 at 13:01
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    The second sentence from the Spanish wikipedia is not inaccurate. Although the stadium was always called "Camp Nou" by most people, it was named something else until around 2000, when the name was officially changed to Camp Nou. I'm not sure why the wikipedia includes that fact about the stadium in Mexico, but it's accurate. It still doesn't really say why the Mexican stadium is called that, though. – Duncan Jul 21 '14 at 21:25
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From what I found, Angel Fernandez, the great commentator who is well known for his breathless GOOOOAAAAAAL screams, had a hand with creating the nickname 'Nou Camp'.

Here's the translated version from this link:

Angel Fernandez, an excellent football commentator, was the first person to call it the "Nou Camp" in those distant years, which resembled that of the Camp Nou in Barcelona.

For those who know Spanish, here's the original text

Ángel Fernández, un excelente comentarista de fútbol, fue la primera persona en llamarle "Nou Camp" por el ambiente del estadio que en aquellos años lejanos, que se asemejaba al de el Camp Nou de Barcelona. Eso fue en una narracion de un juego de fútbol, poniéndole asi al estadio y citando el estadio de Barcelona.

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    Here's a full translation (with a bit of poetic license for the last sentence, as I'm not sure exactly what the commenter is trying to say): Angel Fernandez, an excellent football commentator, was the first person to call it "Nou Camp" because of the atmosphere of the stadium in those distant years, which was similar to that of Camp Nou of Barcelona. This was in a narration of a football game, putting you in the stadium and summoning the stadium of Barcelona. – Duncan Jul 21 '14 at 21:20

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