From Encyclopedia Jr, free information reference for Kids
The word "soccer" used in a London newspaper advertisement, August 2006
The names of football refer to the terms used to describe the sport most commonly referred to as either football or soccer in the English speaking world.
For other usages of the word "football" see: football (word).
[edit] Background
The rules of football were codified in England by the Football Association in 1863, and the name association football was coined to distinguish the game from the other versions of football played at the time. The word soccer is a colloquial abbreviation of association (from assoc.) and first appeared in the 1880s. The word is sometimes credited to Charles Wreford Brown, an Oxford student said to have been fond of shortened forms such as brekkers for breakfast and rugger for rugby football. In the late 19th century the word soccer tended to be used only at independent (public) schools; most people knew the game simply as football. Today the term association football is rarely used, although some clubs still include Association Football Club (AFC) in their name. "Soccer" is used by the largest number of native English speakers, mainly because of its overwhelmingly predominant use in the United States. However, "football" is perhaps used in more countries and by more non-native speakers. The game is sometimes also known colloquially as footy and footer in various places.
[edit] English-speaking countries
Football is more commonly known as soccer in certain English-speaking nations where the word "football" refers to a rival code of football developed within that nation, specifically Australia, Canada, the United States, and parts of Ireland; and in areas where Rugby football is more popular than association football, such as Australia, New Zealand, and the white communities of South Africa. In these countries "football" was often included in the names of the earliest leagues and governing bodies of the sport, but as that word became increasingly associated with other domestic forms of the game, soccer became more widely used.
In the United States, the sport's governing body is the United States Soccer Federation. This body was originally called the U.S. Football Association, and was formed in 1913 by the merger of the American Football Association and the American Amateur Football Association. The word "soccer" was added to the name in 1945, making it the U.S. Soccer Football Association, and it did not drop the word "football" until 1974, when it assumed its current name. Today, "soccer" is the standard name for the sport in the United States, with "football" referring instead to American football. However, with the growth of Spanish language usage in the United States, some now use fútbol, the Spanish name for soccer (pronounced like "football" except for the Spanish accent), even in English; for example, a youth soccer league in Little Rock, Arkansas, is known as the Little Rock Futbol Club. [1]
A similar situation exists in Canada, where "football" (or le football in French) refers only to Canadian football or the closely related American football. The usage of "soccer" is so uniform that even in French-speaking Quebec, the game is known as le soccer and the provincial governing body is the Fédération de Soccer du Québec. (The word soccer is unknown in other Francophone countries; compare with FIFA's origins in France, with the second F standing for football.)
In Australian English, the word football usually means either Australian rules football, rugby union or rugby league depending on the regional background of the speaker. Soccer is the name used for Association football by most Australians. The usage of football to mean Australian rules or rugby football was already fixed when the first reports of Association football in Australia occurred, in 1880. However, the popular usages are not fixed in any legal form, such as a trademark on the word "football", and by the late 20th century, a few Australian authorities began to use the word football in relation to soccer. For example, the sports department at the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), has always used the name "football". In 2004, the Australian Soccer Association changed its name to Football Federation Australia (FFA), and announced that the official name of the sport in Australia had been changed to "football". The FFA mounted a campaign for the new name to be adopted by its subsidiary state organizations and clubs, most of whom have changed their names and/or terminology (with exception of Soccer New South Wales). This was met with antipathy and/or bemusement by followers of Australian rules and rugby league and the game is still mostly known as soccer. Some media sources besides SBS adopted the new usage or used qualifiers such as "the world game", to avoid confusion with the more popular codes of football. However, most media outlets have not adopted the new usage. The national team is still commonly known by its longstanding nickname, The Socceroos.
In Ireland, it is mainly called football in cities and large towns, with rural people calling it Soccer. When a rural person refers to Football, they are more likely to be referring to Gaelic Football. However the governing body The Football Association of Ireland uses the word Football. In the Irish language, the word for association football is sacar.
In South Africa, "soccer" is the more common name, used by all cultural groups when speaking English. The domestic first division is the Premier Soccer League and both in conversation and the media (see eg. The Sowetan or http://www.iol.co.za) the term "soccer" is used almost exclusively. Despite this, the country's national association is called the South African Football Association and "football" might occasionally be used in official contexts.
In the English-speaking Caribbean, the sport is primarily referred to as football. All English-speaking Caribbean football associations have the word "football" in their names.
In the United Kingdom the word "soccer" has waxed and waned in popularity. In common popular usage through the 1960s and 1970s - for example, in the titles of TV programmes, magazines, board games, books, sticker and card collections etc - the word has latterly somewhat fallen into disrepute. Many British fans scorn the use of the word, due to its use by Americans and rugby fans (with which there is a strong rivalry).
[edit] Non-English speaking countries
Football, in its modern form, was exported by the British to much of the rest of the world and many of these nations adopted this common English term for the sport into their own language. This was usually done in one of two ways: either by directly importing the word itself, or by translating its constituent parts, foot and ball. Most Romance languages use the word football, albeit with a different pronunciation and sometimes a different spelling: the Spanish fútbol [ˈfutbol] or balonpie, Portuguese: futebol, Romanian: fotbal, Galician: fútbol, Catalan: futbol and the French, le football is often shortened to le foot. Similarly, the Russian word is futbol (футбол), the Turkish word is futbol and the Serbian word is fudbal (фудбал).
In some languages in which a local word is used for the game, the English word "football" is used for American football. This is the case in German, where association football is known as Fußball and the peak body for American football is known as the German Football League (in English).
In other members of the Germanic family of languages, the word is usually calqued: for example, German: Fußball, Dutch: voetbal, Norwegian: fotball, Swedish: fotboll, and Danish: fodbold.
This also applies to Finnish (jalkapallo), Greek podosfero (ποδόσφαιρο), Arabic (kurat al qadam) and Hebrew kaduregel (כדורגל). In Polish both ways (futbol and piłka nożna) are used, as well as in Czech (fotbal or kopaná (meaning kicking)). The official name in Slovak is futbal (fucík in common language) and in Hungarian there are futball or labdarúgás (meaning ball-kicking), but foci is used in the common langaugage.
In Italy, football is called calcio, from calciare meaning to kick. This is due to the game's resemblance to Calcio Fiorentino, a 16th century ceremonial Florentine court ritual, that has now been revived under the name il calcio storico (historical kick or kickball in costume).
In Croatian and Slovenian, the sport is called nogomet. In Croatian, the word is derived from "noga" (meaning "leg") and "met", which is a suffix derived from the word "nadmetati" (meaning "to compete", "to fight"), hence "competing or fighting using legs". In Slovenian, "noga" has the same meaning as in Croatian, while "met" means "throw", hence "throwing (the ball) with legs".
In Japan, because of American influence following World War II, use of the term sakkā (サッカー) is more common than that of the term futtobōru (フットボール), although the latter term would seem to be gaining popularity. For instance the governing body of the game is known as the Japan Football Association.
In Korea, football is called chook gu (축구). Similarly, in Chinese, the term 足球 (Hanyu Pinyin: zúqiú, Cantonese: juk kau) is used. The term, a calque, literally means football (足=foot, 球=ball), and is always associated with association football. Rugby is known as ganlanqiu (橄榄球, olive ball). American football can be referred to as a type of zuqiu, but it is more commonly seen as a type of ganlanqiu.
In Thai, the word football (ฟุตบอล) is used.
In Vietnamese, the term "bóng đá" is used to denote "football". Its literal meaning is "kicking ball".
In Malay, the sport is called "bola sepak" which is a combination of the words ball (bola) and kick (sepak).
Aside from the name of the game itself, other foreign words based on English football terms include versions in many languages of the word goal (often gol in Romance languages) and schútte (Basel) or tschuutte (Zürich), derived from the English shoot, meaning 'to play football' in German-speaking Switzerland. Also, words derived from kick has found their way into German (noun kicker) and Swedish (verb kicka). In France le penalty means a penalty kick, however the phrase tir au but is often used in the context of a penalty shootout
In the first half of the 20th century, in Spanish and Portuguese were created new words to substitute "football", respectively balompié (balón and pie meaning "ball" and "foot") and ludopédio (from words meaning "game" and "foot"), but progressively these words could not replace the English one and now are only used in club names such as Real Betis Balompié and Albacete Balompié.
[edit] See also
- Football - an overview of the history and development of different football-style sports
