It was my friends from England and Ireland that first got me into soccer. I used to meet up with them to watch matches from the English Premier League. It was through this experience that I became a fan. I’ve now been following the sport for quite a while and I’ve become accustomed to calling it football. I will admit that part of the reason for calling it football rather than soccer is so I don’t have to endure the bias towards Americans for trying to “Americanize” the English game.
I decided to do a bit of research as to why we began calling the sport Soccer rather than Football. Here’s what I found out:
Believe it or not, the term soccer actually comes from the other side of the Atlantic, not ours.
In 2014 University of Michigan professor Stefan Szymanski published a paper that explained that explains the origins of the term. As it turns out, the word was developed by the British. In fact, it was used widely in the UK until about 30-40 years ago when it was viewed as too American.
The story is that back in the mid-1800s a number of British universities played football and decided to standardize the rules for all. One version of the game was played using your hands and became known as “rugby football”. Another version was called "association football".
From there the British gave each version of the sport a nickname. "Rugby football" was shortened to "rugger" while "Association football" came to be called “soccer."‘
Eventually, both forms of the sport crossed the Atlantic. What was formally known as Association Football in the UK was simply called Soccer in the United States. The game known as “gridiron” in the UK was adopted and adapted to become what we now call football. In the UK it is known as “American football”.
According to Szymanski’s findings, the term soccer was still used regularly by the Brtish up until the early 1980s.
Since then, the word soccer in the UK is pretty much only used when referring to the US version of the game. Apparently many felt less British if they continued using the word soccer. Yes, it seems silly, but that’s the story.
In the end, Americans are not the only ones that do not call the sport football. In Canada, Australia, and New Zealand it’s soccer. In Italy it’s Calcio. In Japan, it’s sakkā which is derived from "soccer" and a number of other countries refer to the sport as something other than football or soccer.
Redditor reddripper put together the following excellent map of what "the beautiful game" is called around the world.
