Regular football was around long before American football. So when American football was created why didn't they give it a new name instead of picking a name that was already used by an already established sport and then changing it's name to "soccer".
American football is a direct descendent of rugby, so why didn't they use a variation of that name?
2007-01-28 11:02:03 · 18 answers · asked by DJ Rizla 3 in Sports ➔ Football (American)
Let me point out that I have nothing against American football. I actually like the sport, and became a Steelers fan (before they won the Super Bowl I might add!), although there's not much opportunity to watch it here.
sanmandude1 - How has that got anything to do with football? Are you sure you've answered the right question?
Not Ecky Boy - "Soccer" was around long before American football, not the other way around.
2007-01-28 11:22:35 · update #1
sgoldperson - There's no need to get mad. I just asked a simple question and you go and take it as a personal attack against your sport. As I said, I actually like American football. It's just a question.
2007-01-28 11:30:09 · update #2
good question. we call it soccer in australia too, but that's because we have rugby league, rugby union and aussie rules that we call 'football'. We call american football gridiron. not that we like to call it anything :P
it's purely to avoid confusion. we consider all those codes, including soccer, to be 'football' (Seeing as how you boot a ball with your foot and all..) but we use 'soccer', 'aussie rules' or 'union' etc. as a means of telling them apart...
(Mind you i think they've changed soccer to 'football' over here now officially... so i guess it's going to get even more confusing... 0_o )
The work itself is a slang term from association football and has been around since like, 1880?, also i think it was english in origin. i guess it was so the ENGLISH could tell them apart. it just didn't hang around like it did in america or over here.
2007-01-28 11:32:54 · answer #1 · answered by nat g 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
As pol_douglas points out it's a corruption of 'Assoc(iation)' football. At the time in Oxford and Cambridge there was a vogue for changing words to end in '-er', so an undergraduate would go for a lekker after brekkers (lecture after breakfast). I'm not sure if 'rugger' was coined the same way, but Charles Wreford-Brown was asked by a friend "Are you playing rugger today?" to which he said "No, I'm playing soccer."
I don't understand why the splenetic outbursts against Yanks for calling it soccer - after all they have their own code of 'football' which has been going since 1863. Come to that what about Australian Rules Football? Do you expect the Aussies to call it anything other than footy? Their Association Football team is called the Soccerroos, for goodness' sake! Let's just leave it that many different cultures have their own variety of 'football' and call it such, which means for purposes of disambiguation they have to use words like soccer, gridiron, Aussie Rules etc when they're talking about other sports introduced from outside.
2007-01-28 22:53:34 · answer #2 · answered by igorolman 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
No, because then people would then get U.S. rugby confused with international rugby. I think that if there should be any renaming, in order to not get confused with different forms of football, then U.S. football should be called gridiron (they call it that in Australia), and soccer should continue to be called 'soccer'. After all, the term 'soccer' is short for association football.
2016-03-15 01:31:09 · answer #3 · answered by ? 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The Yanks didn't actually invent the name soccer. As Matt wrote it's a slang shortening for Association Football. The fella who coined the phrase is called Charles Wreford-Brown and he's from Bristol. He captained England and played County cricket, but I can't rememebr who for.
It's amazin the random rubbishthat sticks in your head isn't it.
By the way all the irate Americans out there who viewed this question as an attack....we have no WMD don't invade.
I'm just kidding, love you all.
2007-01-28 14:59:37 · answer #4 · answered by pol_douglas 2 · 5⤊ 0⤋
Rugby grew out of rugby soccer hybrid games and American football grew out of Rugby. It's called soccer from the name of the football organization. Saying you were on a soccer team was the same semantic lines as saying you joined the Boy Scouts.
2007-01-28 16:06:53 · answer #5 · answered by gregory_dittman 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The actual full name for football is association football and soccer is a form of shortening of this name. By the way the World series in Baseball is actually named after a newspaper that used to sponsor the competition so World in the title actually refers to the newspaper.
2007-01-28 13:25:20 · answer #6 · answered by ? 3 · 2⤊ 0⤋
I don't want to seem like a traitor (because I am an American), but you are absolutely correct in your observations. We are so full of ourselves in some ways, that we sometimes think we are the center of the world. American football is a misnomer, and "soccer" isn't even recognised as a word outside the US.
2007-01-29 17:54:31 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 2⤋
OK first off the Webster's Dictonary is named after Daniel Webster who wrote the first one. Oh and since when was soccer football. Only thing I EVER saw that was close was on univision where they call it Futbol. That is a totally different name and pronounced different. All the sudden a bunch of people have nothing better to do then ask about this. Why don't you people get a life? Leave us OUR sport? We don't care if you like our name or not, we ignore your game alone mostly. So why can't you stop coming on here and complaining?
2007-01-28 11:21:09 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 3⤋
Football actually is derived from rugby. Rugby is derived from soccer.
We are going back to last century. (Excuse me, the 19th century.:))
No one knows for sure. (Ask a Canadian, they do it too)
My guess is since soccer was never popular here the game with wide spread use of kicking became football. (In the 19th century the game was more kick based with a rounder ball like Australian rules football -see drop kicks.)
Oh, and because you Limeys are twits. You prove it here. If it gets you twits all pi$$y I guess it was the right choice.:)
2007-01-28 12:24:55 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 2⤋
John B.....Toronto has an MLB team and Montreal used to have one. So sorry, 2 countries compete in it
2007-01-28 11:21:21 · answer #10 · answered by Meilleur_que_toi 4 · 0⤊ 1⤋