Actually I believe it’s called “Football” because most ball games were originally played on horseback.
hmmm are you sure about that? I do not know with certainty but today playing a sport with a horse would be a high demand, back in the days it would have been an even bigger one so I sincerely doubt “most ball games” were originally played on horseback when not having a horse was that much easier
That’s like saying “we call them Earthmobiles because back then, most vehicles were just planes” (no way planes were common before cars)
You are sort of right regarding the origin of soccer, but it was intended to distinguish football played by the association rules vs other types of football which were popular at the time.
Association football is part of a family of football codes that emerged from various ball games played worldwide since antiquity. The word “association” in this term refers to the Football Association (the FA), founded in London in 1863, which published the first set of rules for the sport that same year.[8] The term was coined to distinguish the type of football played in accordance with the FA rules from other types that were gaining popularity at the time, particularly rugby football.[9]
Heading from The Sportsman front page of 25 November 1910, illustrating the continued use of the word “football” to encompass both rugby and association football.
The term soccer comes from Oxford “-er” slang, which was prevalent at the University of Oxford in England from about 1875, and is thought to have been borrowed from the slang of Rugby School. Initially spelt assoccer (a shortening of “association”), it was later reduced to the modern spelling.[10][11] Early alternative spellings included socca and socker.[9] This form of slang also gave rise to rugger for rugby football, fiver and tenner for five pound and ten pound notes, and the now-archaic footer that was also a name for association football.[12]
Within the English-speaking world, association football is now usually called simply “football” in Great Britain and most of Ulster in the north of Ireland,[13] whereas people usually call it “soccer” in regions and countries where other codes of football are prevalent, such as Australia,[14] Canada, South Africa, most of Ireland (excluding Ulster),[15] and the United States. A notable exception is New Zealand, where in the first two decades of the 21st century, under the influence of international television, “football” has been gaining prevalence, despite the dominance of other codes of football, namely rugby union and rugby league.[16]
Umm… ever heard of Polo? Buzkashi? Chovgan? Pato? All of those are ball games played on horseback (except Buzkashi which is played on horseback but uses a a goat carcass instead of a ball)
Your analogy is also false because cars were invented before planes.
1885–1886: Benz Patent-Motorwagen becomes the first practical automobile.
1903: Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright achieve the first powered, controlled airplane flight with the Wright Flyer.
Umm… ever heard of Polo? Buzkashi? Chovgan? Pato? All of those are ball games played on horseback (except Buzkashi which is played on horseback but uses a a goat carcass instead of a ball)
Your analogy is also false because cars were invented before planes.
That was exactly my point… do you think nobody thought of kicking a ball around BEFORE they decided to break horses, train them and then push a ball around with a stick while on horseback?
To risk a valuable commodity as a horse in a game, it implies humanity was already well off enough (at least some people) to keep horses around with relative ease
My point was that the simplest form of a sport (on foot) would have likely existed (and indeed they did) WAAAAAAYYYYY before we decided to play sports on horses
At the end of the day, it seems both sources are valid: Horseback sports were the only ones officially recognized during medieval times; AS WELL AS, historical records showing games played by kicking balls from way before. Which of those 2 sources or both to a certain extent are part of the etymology of the modern word “football”
do you think nobody thought of kicking a ball around BEFORE they decided to break horses
of course they did, but why would a self respecting elite adopt peasant terminology for a beloved pass time? How could it get away with skewing early rules and standards if they couldb’t frame it entirely as theur own? How could they exclusively commodify it if it were not mythologized as their own creation?
Of course these point are vastly irrelevant to the discussion at hand but, make no mistake, i’d never have made them if they were to begin with.
Yes it was called football because the peasants played it on their feet while the nobles played polo and other equestrian sports. There’s a huge documented history, several Kings in English history all had a take on the issue. Some thought it was awful because they hated seeing their peasants creating a spectacle and sometimes they got hurt and couldn’t work, but other kings leaned into it and used it to gain favor with the lower classes.
According to wikipedia, what you claim is true but also there is documented history of the “foot” part coming up because of the kicking of the ball from really far back
The truth is we do not seem to know which of the 2 sources truly directed the current name… very likely both contributed
That doesn’t make sense because most forms of football (rugby and american etc) use mostly the hands to carry the ball. The name was never about kicking, it was about playing on foot, until John Cleese made a joke about it. There’s sources going back to the middle ages about it.
hmmm are you sure about that? I do not know with certainty but today playing a sport with a horse would be a high demand, back in the days it would have been an even bigger one so I sincerely doubt “most ball games” were originally played on horseback when not having a horse was that much easier
That’s like saying “we call them Earthmobiles because back then, most vehicles were just planes” (no way planes were common before cars)
You are sort of right regarding the origin of soccer, but it was intended to distinguish football played by the association rules vs other types of football which were popular at the time.
From Wikipedia:
Umm… ever heard of Polo? Buzkashi? Chovgan? Pato? All of those are ball games played on horseback (except Buzkashi which is played on horseback but uses a a goat carcass instead of a ball)
Your analogy is also false because cars were invented before planes.
1885–1886: Benz Patent-Motorwagen becomes the first practical automobile.
1903: Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright achieve the first powered, controlled airplane flight with the Wright Flyer.
wait…what?
That was exactly my point… do you think nobody thought of kicking a ball around BEFORE they decided to break horses, train them and then push a ball around with a stick while on horseback?
To risk a valuable commodity as a horse in a game, it implies humanity was already well off enough (at least some people) to keep horses around with relative ease
My point was that the simplest form of a sport (on foot) would have likely existed (and indeed they did) WAAAAAAYYYYY before we decided to play sports on horses
At the end of the day, it seems both sources are valid: Horseback sports were the only ones officially recognized during medieval times; AS WELL AS, historical records showing games played by kicking balls from way before. Which of those 2 sources or both to a certain extent are part of the etymology of the modern word “football”
of course they did, but why would a self respecting elite adopt peasant terminology for a beloved pass time? How could it get away with skewing early rules and standards if they couldb’t frame it entirely as theur own? How could they exclusively commodify it if it were not mythologized as their own creation?
Of course these point are vastly irrelevant to the discussion at hand but, make no mistake, i’d never have made them if they were to begin with.
Sure, but the term Football wasn’t coined when ball games were invented. It was coined much later when there were already lots of different sports.
Among the sports people people played at the time, Football was one where the participants are on foot.
Yes it was called football because the peasants played it on their feet while the nobles played polo and other equestrian sports. There’s a huge documented history, several Kings in English history all had a take on the issue. Some thought it was awful because they hated seeing their peasants creating a spectacle and sometimes they got hurt and couldn’t work, but other kings leaned into it and used it to gain favor with the lower classes.
According to wikipedia, what you claim is true but also there is documented history of the “foot” part coming up because of the kicking of the ball from really far back
The truth is we do not seem to know which of the 2 sources truly directed the current name… very likely both contributed
That doesn’t make sense because most forms of football (rugby and american etc) use mostly the hands to carry the ball. The name was never about kicking, it was about playing on foot, until John Cleese made a joke about it. There’s sources going back to the middle ages about it.
The word “football” precedes all those modern sports you are referring to.
As I said, from the wikipedia article, it seems there is a bit of both