Toto Safe Guide - The Origin of the Name “Soccer”
The Football Association’s game began to be known as “association football.” British players would often shorten this to “assoc.” An -er ending was often used for nicknames by the British, so this term eventually became “assoccer” and then, finally, “soccer.” This new name also helped players to differentiate the game from rugby football, which was often called “rugger.”
The two principal codes of the game emerged in the mid to late 19th century when football became popular in Victorian England. The many forms of football now played around the world originate from games played in Britain and Ireland at this time.
Known to most of the rest of the world as football, or “fútbol,” the beautiful game is almost exclusively referred to as soccer in the United States, but many Americans may be surprised to learn that our outlier moniker actually originated across the pond. These sports themselves derived from various age-old games involving an object resembling a ball and any number of players. Codification occurred around the time of the muscular Christianity movement, as this philosophy required that the players adhere to a set of rules which promoted morality, teamwork, and physical well-being through sport.
Although football-type games have been around for centuries, the sport we know today is often said to have begun in 1863, when England’s newly formed Football Association wrote down a set of rules. At the time, it was the most widely played game of its kind in the country, but it wasn’t the only one. Rugby football, named after an English boarding school, was a variation that allowed players to carry and run with the ball to advance it toward the goal. The game played under the Football Association’s rules thus became known as association football.