You’ve probably heard that Americans and Canadians call soccer Soccer , while rugby is Football , which sounds a bit arrogant compared to the rest of the world, especially English-speaking countries. right? Actually, Soccer is a word that comes from England, not created by Americans as we mistakenly think. The story begins around the first half of the 19th century. At that time, teenagers in high schools and universities, especially boarding schools in the United Kingdom, loved to play football, including two types of football. feet and hands (no chopsticks 😁 ). The two most prominent sports are soccer and rugby. By 1863, the first Football Association was born in London, to standardize the rules of football and soccer. To avoid confusion, they named rugby Rugby Football, and soccer called Association Football .
In the 1860s – 1870s, students in England, especially young people at Oxford University, came up with a way to shorten words to quickly call these two sports. As you all know, teenagers are the age when it comes to creativity. They use the suffix -er to shorten words for simplicity, for example Breakfast -> Brekker; Rugby -> Rugger; Football -> Footer, football players are called Footballer.
Similarly, the word Association is shortened, taking the syllable -soc and adding the suffix -er to form -> Soccer to refer to soccer. Documents record that the shortened word Footer for rugby was “invented” in 1863, shortly after the football association was born. The word Soccer refers to soccer, officially recognized since 1891 in the mass media.
And of course, the two words Soccer to refer to soccer and Football to refer to rugby are English, of British origin.
The American football sport is called American Football, or Football for short. It differs from Rugby in two basic ways that are easy to distinguish: each American Football team has 11 people, wearing hard protective gear (chest armor, helmets, thigh covers, pillows, etc.), while the Rugby team has 15 people, wearing little or Not even wearing protective gear.
That is why Americans and Canadians use the word Soccer to call soccer, because the connotation of the word Soccer is Association Football.
In addition to North America, some other countries such as Australia, NZ, and Ireland also use the word Soccer to call soccer.
