Soccer by Any Other Name

Soccer is played all around the world, but the world’s people have many ways of referring to the game. Soccer is played by the same rules throughout the world, but is referred to as football, fútbol, futebol, calcio, fussball, voetbal, sakka, among other names.

The original name given to the sport is the most logical: football. Though the term has a Neanderthalish tinge to it (“Me Tarzan. My foot kick ball.”), football has been used to refer to the game for centuries. In his book The Ball is Round, David Goldblatt quotes an edict issued in 1477 by British king Edward IV:

No person shall practise any unlawful games such as dice, quoits, football, and such games. (17)

Edward IV, football hater

By the time formal rules were established for the game in the 19th century, the term football had a long history in Britain. Its application to the newly formalized sport was natural. The split with the sport which would become rugby in the middle of the 19th century saw the sport of the oval ball game take a name from the town in which its rules were formed. The town of Rugby is now known more for the sport invented within it than its status as the birthplace of Norman Lockyer, who would go on to discover the element helium.

Football’s rise in popularity came at a time when the British Empire was at its peak. The sun never set on the British Empire and neither did its football-playing subjects. As Brits moved around the world, they were the greatest advocates of the new game, spreading the word more effectively than any religious evangelicals.

In many countries, the term “football” was taken directly from the English and used as a loanword in the native language. Thus, the French, Italians, Germans, Argentines, and Brazilians all initially awkwardly used the term football to refer to this new British sporting import. Many have concocted new names but ironically the French, notoriously prickly on matters of language, still refer to the sport as “football.”

The French Football Federation logo

Many countries would transliterate the name football into their own languages. Football became fútbol in Spanish and futebol in Portuguese. Though these terms have essentially become part of those two languages, they still strike me as a bit odd at times. Some in these countries also saw these transliterations as odd and attempted to use native words to refer to football. The full name of Spain’s Real Betis, for example, is Real Betis Balompie, Balompie is the literal translation (balón being ball and pie being foot) of football, but rarely used today.

Other countries were more successful in having native words stick to refer to football. Both German (fussball or fußball) and Dutch (voetbal) use the literal translation approach that proved unsuccessful in Spain.

The Italian term for football, however, is calcio, which bears no resemblance to the English word. Calcio literally means kick in Italian, but the name comes originally from an ancient game played in Italy during medieval times. The game, called Calcio Fiorentino as it was played in Florence, involved 27 players per team using hands, feet and utter brutality (click here for a video) to propel a ball into the opposing team’s goal.

Calcio Fiorentino is reenacted annually, as in this picture

Calcio’s application to modern football was an intentionally ideological decision. When football was brought into Italy by the British, it was met with some resistance. As David Goldblatt points out,

The earnest cadres of the Socialist Party’s youth wing spent their 1910 congress decrying modern competitive sport as a degrading and exploitative spectacles that was contributing to the degeneration of people. (151)

If football was degrading and exploitative, the many Italians who took it didn’t seem to mind. Football’s growing popularity meant that opposing it on ideological grounds was no longer feasible. So, in what Goldblatt describes as a “symbolic victory based on an invented history,” (154) the Italians renamed football calcio, implying a (nonexistent) link between their ancient sport and the new game.

As a young child, I remember asking my parents why we called a sport involving catching and throwing a ball football when surely soccer deserved the name. In the United States, football refers to American football, a spinoff of rugby, a sport which grew widely in this country before soccer did. Thus, with the term football already in use, organizers used a shortened version of Association Football (the full name of the sport) to refer to soccer.

Soccer, American style

There are a few countries that also use the term soccer, including Australia (in order to avoid conflict with its own Australian Rules football) and New Zealand (I assume the Kiwis simply use the same term as their larger island neighbors).

Surprisingly, Japan also uses the term soccer, or more precisely sakka (???? in Japanese). Like Spanish and Portuguese speakers who had earlier made football a part of their own languages, the Japanese also transliterated a foreign word into their own language.

Sakka a la J League

The name the Japanese use to refer to the sport has to due with historical circumstance. Though soccer had been played for decades in Japan, it only became prominent on the sports scene in the country in the second half of the 20th century. At this time, the sun had long set on the British Empire, but a new American Empire has risen to replace it. Thus, although the national organization is called the Japanese Football Association, the Japanese people have chosen an American term to refer to the sport.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 6th, 2007 at 7:33 pm and is filed under Asia, Europe, History, Language, Latin America, North America, Oceania. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.