Around the World Cup Soccer/Football tournament there was a lot of discussion about US Football vs Euro Football. Obviously Euro Football is played much more with the feet and makes much more sense than the US style Football game.

I heard on the radio station today that although it is a derivative of both Rugby and Euro football, somehow the name football followed the new US game. Ironically it was the Brits that gave Association Football the nickname socca and it evolved into what us Yanks call Soccer.

From http://www.word-detective.com/121800.html
'It's true that the game known as "football" in most of the world (not just the UK) is known as "soccer" in the US, but we didn't just pull the word out of the air so that we could call our quasi-gladiatorial extravaganzas "football." In fact, you Brits actually invented the word.
"Soccer," when it first appeared in the 1890s, was spelled "socca," which was short for "association" or "association football," meaning football played according to the rules laid down by the British Football Association. It was also called "socker" until the current form "soccer" appeared around 1895.

So it would appear that in the US with both games being known as football, Euro football was identified as soccer based on the rules set by Association Football while the generic term football stuck with the US style football.

It is interesting to know that US Football originally was purely a running game. Maybe that's how football got tagged to US football since the game is played "on foot." Because of the excessive piling on resulting in numerous injuries and over a dozen deaths the game was almost banned from university. The forward pass was introduced by presidential order (President Roosevelt) to save the game at the university level.

Here is some more history of the origins of the US Football.
http://wiwi.essortment.com/americanfootbal_rwff.htm

Very interesting stuff, Alan. I have heard a couple of different variations on the info you've posted here. As far as the word "soccer" is concerned, I heard it was created by an Englishman to clear up the confusion between football and rugby. Even late into the 19th Century, many people called rugby football, which led to come confusion, so he wanted to come up with a unique name for football played with the round ball, and he eventually came up with soccer. However, the name rugby became increasingly popular and calling the game football fell out of style. Thus soccer was born, but not used much.
As for American football, the game was created based on a set of rules found by a college coach (whose identity escapes me at the moment) which allowed handling of the football by all players, but was different in some ways from rugby. This game was called football with handling rules, which was eventually shortened to football.
Don't know if either of those stories are true, but they can make for an interesting conversation/argument around the dinner table with friends.

Football. English

Fussbal. German

Voetbal. Dutch

These are just three I know off hand. Football is played by kicking a ball around with your foot. Hence the name. Simple realy.

Carrying the ball around by hand is done in a game called 'Rugby'...

Wearing shoulderpads is something 80's soap actresses know more about...

Interestingly many of the Rugby Unions are still called XYZ Rugby Football Association... It's only recently that our national union dumped the Football and are now known as the South African Rugby Association...
Seems like the generic "football" part of the name like to follow all derivatives of football...

I always thought American Football was refered to as "Grid Iron"?

Rudi

Grid Iron refers to the field, not the game.

I just thought it was interesting the the US calls Euro Football Soccer and that the term Soccer originated from Europe where they call it Football.