Is "Football" the real name of Soccer?

futbol is the original way

yes, no question

Depends on what you mean by “real.”

yes

Yes it is and futbol as someone else said is what? The game was invented in England so where and why futbal comes from beats me!

Yes. @MrGeneVan futbol is a Spanish rendering of the word football. I think the English form is correct.

Edit: On second thought, why do they Italians call it Calcio? Perhaps there is no default name.

Yes…
Fútbol is Spanish
Football is English

http://www.eatliver.com/img/2009/3849.jpg

On this topic, it’s been pointed out to me by an anonymous source on /b/ that, since an American football is neither predominantly interacted with by the feet nor actually has the shape of a ball, it would be more appropriate to refer to it as a “handegg”. And presumably the term would carry over to the sport.

[Edit: @Master beat me to this remark. And he actually found the picture. I tip my hat to him.]

It has also been pointed out to me that the term “football” actually etymologically refers to the fact that it’s a game played on foot, as opposed to on a horse, like Polo.

I’ll leave it open to personal interpretation whether those two random remarks are actually useful to the question asker at all.

Yes, wherever soccer is called football.

The librarians of Australia did ask the Library of Congress to apply the name “football” to the game that was listed in the List of Subject Headings as “Soccer”. The Library’s reply was that Americans understood football to mean the game as played in the US. A case of the 1000 pound gorilla. The Library of Congress List of Subject Headings is pretty much an international standard.

International standard as said by an American. Pretty infuriating to be honest!

a standard that prefers the terminology of one specific country over the international one, is hardly and “international standard”

Of course. Why are we still not using the metric system either? Arrogant bastards…

The Library of Congress sets the standard for American subject headings. If other libraries in other countries choose to use it, that’s their prerogative. Nothing is stopping the Australian library organization from coming up with its own list of subject headings.

@essieness
Incidentally, the USA are also the only place where dates are written month/day/year, rather than the more sensible day/month/year.

Of course It’s forgiveable if people don’t want to adapt to a system they’re not used to, but if these people happen to be the nexus of Western culture, it becomes a rather unfortunate situation.

No, “Futbol” is the real name for soccer.

I’m getting pissed off now with this futbol bollocks!
English invented it, therefore it’s FOOTBALL
In fact, most standards etc are English as will they always be.
Bloody hell !!!

@Bobbydavid
Ah, the British pot calling the American kettle black.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soccer#History
“Games revolving around the kicking of a ball have been played in many countries throughout history. According to FIFA, the “very earliest form of the game for which there is scientific evidence was an exercise of precisely this skilful technique dating back to the 2nd and 3rd centuries BC in China (the game of cuju).”[11] Various forms of football were played in medieval Europe, though rules varied greatly by both period and location.
The modern rules of football are based on the mid-19th century efforts to standardise the widely varying forms of football played at the public schools of England.”

The English only standardised the rules. The sport has been invented independently all over the globe. Your people has no special intellectual property rights to it.
That makes it just about as correct to call it Football as it is to call it Futbol, Fußball, Le Foot or Voetbal.

It’s not the “real” name per se; it’s another name and it’s the original name, but that doesn’t make it any more “real” than “soccer”.

Germany is called “Allemagne” in France. The Germans don’t call themselves that, but that doesn’t make the name fake; it’s just another name. In that case it happens to be an exonym.

I thought it was originally called Association Football in the UK.

I hate football . . . oh well . . .

No. American football pwns soccer. I’m sorry.

American Football is actually closer to rugby with extra padding than it is to Football (Soccer).

Back in 1863 in England, two football associations (association football and rugby football, aka Rugby Union) split off from each other. One of the reasons is that the Association people wanted to only use feet to move the ball, while the rugby people wanted to use both hands and feet (and bits of bone-smashing violence).

Association football had a nickname in Britain formed from the letter SOC in the word Association, which was the word “soccer.” Supposedly this happened at Eaton, where the game was also sometimes called “footer.” Rugby’s nickname is “rugger.” These are part of the “Oxford -er” coinages found in Britain, where the -er sound is added to a word, a bit of slang thought have been borrowed from the slang of Rugby School.

The first recorded use of “soccer” (sometimes spelled “socker”) was in 1895 and the term was made popular by a prominent English footballer, Charles Wreford-Brown (1866–1951).

This nickname (soccer) is often used today to refer to football in countries where another form of football exists, primarily the USA (although Australia has its Aussie rules football, or footie, and there is also Canadian Football, as well as burgeoning leagues in Italy).

In essence, the British both standardised the rules of the game and invented its nickname of “soccer”. As often happens, the colonies have kept on using an older term that has since been abandoned by Britain itself.

@cwilbur – ”...sets the standard for American subject headings.” Which is a fact. It is also an internationally accepted standard because for several years the US was, and still is, the only country with the resources to maintain the system, viz. a consistent and reliable list of terms for describing concepts. So all of us, roaming without the pale, we make do with LCSH: we don’t have the time nor the money to set up equivalent lists and in any case, why re-invent the wheel? No need to lift your nostrils at us, @cwilbur, the US depends upon our contributions to make the international exchange of information work. If your local library can find a title from a country on the other side of the world, it is because all of us are applying standards originally created by US librarians.

I seem to have said more than I intended, but it is something I feel strongly about. When reading this, and other threads, it is often surprising, and even alarming, that so many Americans have no idea of their country’s influence in small as well as great matters. The day you have to cut allocations to the Library of Congress, there will be mourning in the groves of academe, and not only in the US.

There is FOOTBALL and then there is American Football.
Rest is detritus.

Until I lived in another country I had no idea how many people dislike, resent, are jealous of, hate Americans and the USA. I always thought we were pretty nice people, in general anyhow.

I tell folks all the time, when they attack me for being a yank, that Americans are just like everyone else, there are some total jerks and most are nice people who just happen to live in the USA. They may not have even voted for whomever is in office and causing all the problems.

Then I tell them that the next time they need help with something, don’t come knocking on the door of the USA if we are such vile creatures.

If American has the resources to keep the list, then I guess they can keep it the way they see fit, just as any other country would if they were doing the job.

I call it soccer. In Australia they are trying to get people to call it football, but here is a conflict as well because there are several other codes who all use the term football at one time or another.

@bea2345: so, you’re depending on the work that the Library of Congress does because you don’t have the resources to do it yourself, and yet you expect the Library of Congress to dance to the tune you call?

The people who are paying to have the work done—the American taxpayers, in this case—get to say how the work is done. If you don’t like that, you are perfectly free to commit the resources to do it the way you want.

@cwilbur – you are being unfair. Read my post again. I was in no way berating the Library of Congress for being American; I was merely observing something that librarians have known since the invention of the personal computer – and suspected long before that. No one body can have a monopoly on information, willy nilly, it gets shared.

There is a book by one of your librarians, Sanford Berman, Prejudices and antipathies, which is still available online. It says, far better than I can, why so many people have difficulties with LCSH. Because it is foreign I can’t criticise it? You sound like one of the editors of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians: he said that if we did not like its approach, we should create our own Dictionary. That is no answer. The Library of Congress has produced a body of work that makes scholarship accessible to all. It is an incredible achievement. Don’t cheapen it. The fact that thousands of institutions around the world need these tools, depend on them, should tell you something.

One last point. When students come home from US institutions, often it is to responsible jobs in the public and private sectors. And they buy American, because that is where they trained. Don’t think your money people haven’t noticed it. They have. And they want it to continue.

@bea2345 and @cwilbur, I’m not sure why Australian librarians would do that because I’m pretty sure we call it soccer too.

One…foot…long…ball…. football. It has nothing to do with using your feet.

@Jack_Haas An interesting etymology, but I have my doubts about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_(word)#Etymology

Does this really matter? Watch the game, whatever it is, and enjoy it, or don’t watch the game. A bunch of people on a field playing with a ball is a good thing. They could be on a field with weapons instead.

@shrubbery – whether soccer or football, it is my second most favourite game (the first in my heart is cricket) and frankly I should care what it is called. But for a time it was a hot issue in Australian librarianship: ask your local library.

@bea2345: I think the editors of the Grove Dictionary have it spot on. You can criticize it as much as you like, but the people who are actually paying for the work and the people who are actually doing the work get to say how it’s done. If you aren’t providing funding and support, and you aren’t doing the work, you can criticize as much as you like, but you don’t get the same level of input as the people who are providing funding and support and doing the work.

The Library of Congress created something that suits its own needs and is sharing it with you. You didn’t pay for it, and you don’t have the resources to do something comparable on your own. It seems incredibly rude and ill-mannered to complain about it not meeting your particular needs.

Languages do change. That’s okay. I would rather worry about Americans not using the metric system while playing soccer.

@mattbrowne – Are you worried about Americans not using the metric system while they are playing soccer, or are you worrying about it while you are playing soccer?

There is a difference.

And we can’t mess with the metric system while playing American football because yardage is all important, not meterage.

@cwilbur – who’s complaining? the taxpayer of Trinidad and Tobago is paying good money to maintain catalogues using LCSH and the Library of Congress Classification System, not to mention the Dewey Decimal Classification. All were originated, and developed, by the Library of Congress. We pay for these services and it is because we, and other governments, pay for them, access to the freebies is made possible for small and poor organizations. And we contribute to these tools, help to make them more accessible to everyone. Every time I open LCSH or DDC, I see additions that were made by libraries in Guyana, Brazil, Australia and Singapore. So my interest, and the interest of other librarians is not just professional, it is intensely personal.

@aprilsimnel you’re right I believe. It is “association football” in order to separate it from “rugby football” however since rugby football has been shortened to just “rugby” in most every country that plays it the need to call it “association football” has long since dropped out. :).

@Darwin – No, I was worried about wrong priorities. If the whole world, i.e. every single country calls it football, to me it’s okay to call it soccer because football means what we call American football. There’s also no need to call a truck a lorry or a diaper a nappy. In Germany the people in the southeast use the term Weissbier for Hefeweizen and there are many other examples. Language does change and there will always be regional differences.

If the whole world, i.e. every single country uses kilometers and grams and liters, America should do the same. It’s long overdue. Keeping non-metric for American football is fine. It would sound a bit odd to talk about the 2.73 meter “yard” line. Everything else like miles and feet and gallons and ounces should end up in the trash can of history. The sooner the better. I don’t want to wait for Star Trek going metric. And yes, we can have a smart migration strategy and dual labeling for a decade or so. NASA in Houston should speak metric only allowing all Mars probes to land safely.

Half-yes. The word soccer is derived from ‘association football’, which has its origin in the standardization of rules for the sport in the British Isles in the 19th century.

If you say ‘football’ in Britain and most English-speaking countries other than the US and Australia (dunno about New Zealand), you mean association football.

If you say football in Australia, you mean Aussie Rules football, though you might also be referring to one of two rugbies or even association football.

If you’re an American travelling in certain British or Commonwealth pubs and accuse association football of being ‘soccer’, and you’re not a gel, you’ll get thumped. And if I happened to be watching, I’d yell at the thumpers to “Thump him harder, ya tossers!”

Soccer is a bad word. When I refer to the sport in the US, I call it association football. The term ‘soccer’ shall never pass my lips, for such is sacrilege.

@lucyferr
“The word soccer is derived…”
”...of being ‘soccer’...”
“Soccer is a…”
“The term ‘soccer’ shall never pass my lips, for such is sacrilege.”
Um…

Well, the World Cup comes off in a few days, everybody for the moment is calling it football, starting with FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association).