Names for football (soccer)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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).
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[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. During the late 19th century the word soccer tended to be used only at British independent (public) schools; even in the UK, most people knew the game simply as football. The term association football has never been widely used, although in England some clubs in rugby league strongholds adopted the title Association Football Club (AFC) to avoid confusion with the dominant sport in their area.
The longer version of the name, "soccer football", is used less often than it once was. The United States Soccer Federation was known as the United States Soccer Football Association from 1945 until 1974 when it adopted its current name. Some soccer clubs, in Australia for example, still contain the words "soccer football" in their titles. "Football" is used in more countries by more speakers and by more non-native speakers; as well as countries where the game is most prominent. The game is sometimes also known colloquially as footy and footer in various places. In only a few countries "soccer" is the most dominant form, the United States being the largest.
[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 union or rugby league are 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 rarely used in other Francophone countries; however, in FIFA, a French acronym, the "FA" stands for football association, French for "Association football".)
In Australian English, the word football usually means either Australian rules football or rugby league, depending on the regional background of the speaker. Rugby union, which is not as popular as rugby league in Australia, is also sometimes referred to as "football". Soccer is the name used for Association football by most Australians. The usage of football to mean Australian rules or rugby football was already well-established 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. 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". As part of a large reform of football, The FFA mounted a campaign for the new name to be adopted by its subsidiary state organizations and clubs, many of whom have changed their names and terminology. This was met with antipathy and bemusement by some followers of Australian rules and rugby league and the game is still mostly known as soccer. Some media sources 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, the sport is quite often called soccer (though not exclusively) to distinguish it from Gaelic football. The naming convention confusion usually only occurs between Gaelic football and soccer as rugby union is only rarely termed football and then is almost always prefixed with the word rugby as in 'rugby football'. Association football is often referred to as football without confusion amongst many "soccer" followers; chosing to refer to Gaelic football as simply "gaelic". Terms such as "soccer ball", "soccer boots", and "soccer player" are almost never used; "football", "football boots", and "footballer" are the common terms. During times when soccer is prominent such as during the FIFA World Cup, then the generic term football may be understood to mean soccer especially if major games in the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship are not also taking place. The state broadcaster RTE always refers to football when reporting Gaelic Games and soccer when reporting soccer. In the Irish language, the word for association football is sacar.
In New Zealand English, association football is usually called soccer. "Football" usually refers to rugby union, but can also refer to rugby league. It is, however, considered inappropriate to refer to "football" without supporting context as to which code the speaker means, so as to avoid confusion. Therefore, while it is common for "football" (or the slang term "footie") to be used to refer to rugby union, it is usually not used otherwise.
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 e.g. The Sowetan or Independent Online), 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. (The nickname of the Trinidad & Tobago national team, "The Soca Warriors", refers to a style of music.
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 (in particular English and Scottish) fans scorn the use of the word, due to its perceived Americaness. The modern-day dislike for the word can be summed up by Randy Lerner, the American owner of Aston Villa, observing that "if I call it soccer they would drag me around by my nostrils".[2]
In Wales, there is slightly different emphasis due to the popularity of rugby union. "Soccer" is used more frequently than in England or Scotland, especially where it is necessary to differentiate between association football and rugby union. For example, "The Millennium Stadium is used by the Wales rugby and soccer teams." The word "soccer" tends to be seen less negatively than in England. The term "football" is however the more common term, and appears in the name of the governing body of the sport, "The Football Association of Wales". Nowadays "football" would almost mainly be understood to mean "Association Football" rather than rugby union. The term "football" is still used very occasionally in connection with rugby union, but only where the context that it refers to rugby would already be absolutely clear, and then only in very specific appropriate contexts, for example referring to good kick, e.g. "The outside half showed excellent football skills, in kicking for position on the opposition's 22-metre line." In the Welsh language the situation is much simpler; pêl-droed is an exact literal translation of "football", and rygbi (roughly pronounced as "Roogbi") is "rugby".
[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 balompié, 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 other members of the Germanic family of languages, the word is usually calqued: for example, 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 language.
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 Brazilian Portuguese, due to the pervading presence of football in Brazilian culture, many words related to the sport have found their way into everyday language, including the verb chutar (from shoot) - which originally meant "to kick a football", but is now the most widespread equivalent of the English verb "to kick".
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
