Question: why is football football and football soccer?


  • right this might seem straightforward, but it is not to me:

    why do americans refer to football as football despite that you clearly use your hands more than anything…

    and then to our nice and sense making game football u give the name ‘soccer’? what going on there…
    attempt of cultural imperialism or alternative marketing…??

    all resposes clearing this myth are appreciated… 8)


  • …because “handball” was already taken. :wink:


  • its simply another way to spite the rest of the world, along with farenheit, and the other systems of measurements. unfortunately, it ends up spiting america, as few americans (relatively speaking) know the metric system


  • I just don’t think a game where only one player’s foot actually has anything to do with the ball should be called “Football”.


  • I know this probably applies to many of the topics here, and Im not saying this to anyone in particular, but……

    WHO THE HELL CARES?

    Maybe the guy who named it did it out of spite, maybe hes an idiot, or maybe there was some other reason. Does it really matter?

    (Again, I realize that the same could probably be applied to most topics we discuss, but I just had to rant on that for some reason)


  • easy janus… it is actually a good question


  • My (American) football history is a little rusty, but the game essentially developed from rugby. In its early days, it involved a lot more kicking, hence the name football. The game was gradually changed into what we know it as today, but people were too lazy to change the name.


  • But why call it football when “football” was already taken? Being English I tend to call one American Football and the other plain ol’ Football.

    If football is a weird name on account of the lack of ball-to-foot contact, how about “soccer”, where’s that from? Socks?

    No one I know plays football/soccer in just socks.

    They wear boots.


  • It all started innocently enough…

    During the American Civil War some board Yankees were a-lookin’ fer sumpthin’ ta do betwixt losing battles(as you might guess it was early in the war.) They looked around and found a few Rebel boddy parts blowd clean offen soldier’s boddy’s. They found a head, a hand, a wanker and a foot.

    They wanted to be able to throw it and kick it in the game they was thinkin’ up sooo…

    They eliminated the idea of using the head as it was kinda heavy and sumtimes when they caught it or picked it up it kinda was spooky having two eyes buggin’ out atcha or two empty sockets starin’ atcha iffin the crows and magpies got ta the head first.

    They gave up on using the hand cuz it felt like you wuz shakin’ hands with the dead(an’ they wuz gonna be doin’ that soon enough.)

    They dropped the idea of using the wanker for a passel a rezins. Sum Yankees felt kinda akward holdin sumone else’s wanker. Sum would stop in the middle of the game and play with thar own wanker. However, mostly the games would break out in fights cuz a all the Bluebellies that’d be grabbin’ everyone else’s wanker!

    Sos they settled on the foot cuz it was passabul, catchabul, kickabul, not too heavy, personal nor spooky. Though they did continue to have some trouble with the occassional Yankee who had a foot fettish, collected toejam, sucked toes or was studyin’ ta be a podiatrist.


  • Are you making this stuff up? :roll:


  • He is …. and i hope (and think) he is aware of that :) ;)


  • It’s a good story, nonetheless, and possibly has some actual roots in some dark corner of history. :wink:

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