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The names of association football refer to the terms used to describe the sport most commonly referred to in the English-speaking world as football, or in some countries which it is not the most prominent sport; soccer.
Including all countries which have English speaking populations, football is the most commonly used term for the sport. In countries which English is an official language a heavy majority call the game football.
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The rules of football were codified in England by the Football Association in 1863, and the name association football was coined to distinguish the game from the other versions of football played at the time. The word soccer is a colloquial abbreviation of association (from assoc.) and first appeared in the 1880s. The word is sometimes credited to Charles Wreford Brown, an Oxford student said to have been fond of shortened forms such as brekkers for breakfast and rugger for rugby football. (See Oxford -er)
During the late 19th century the word soccer tended to be used only at British independent schools[citation needed]; even in the UK, most people knew the game simply as football[citation needed]. The term association football has never been widely used, although in England some clubs in rugby league strongholds adopted the title Association Football Club (AFC) to avoid confusion with the dominant sport in their area.
The longer version of the name, "soccer football", is used less often than it once was. The United States Soccer Federation was known as the United States Soccer Football Association from 1945 until 1974, when it adopted its current name. Some soccer clubs, in Australia for example, still contain the words "soccer football" in their titles. "Football" is used in more countries by more speakers, including more non-native speakers of English, as well as countries where the game is most prominent. The game is also known colloquially as footy and footer in various places. In only a few countries "soccer" is the most dominant form, the United States being the largest.
Below is a list of countries or territories who hold the English language as an official or de facto official language and the name given to this sport. Included in the list also are places which have some level of autonomy in the sport and their own separate federation but are not actually indepedent countries: for example with the United Kingdom, the costituent countries and some overseas territories each have their own federation and national team. Not included are places such as Cyprus for example, where English is widely spoken on the ground but is not amongst the countries specifically stated official languages.
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The game is known simply as football in most countries where English is an official language, such as England, Scotland, Wales, the Commonwealth Caribbean (including Trinidad and Tobago,The nickname of the Trinidad & Tobago national team, "The Soca Warriors", refers to a style of music.Jamaica and others), Malta, India, Nigeria, Cameroon, Puerto RicoFor example Puerto Rico Islanders Football Club, Pakistan, Liberia, Singapore, Philippines and others, stretching over many regions including parts of Europe, Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Central America.
It is worth noting that for many of these nations, the game is also the national sport of the country. However, in other variations of the English language, spoken by countries who do not hold the sport as their national game and instead play other codes of football which are less spread on a global scale, it is known as soccer.
Yet even in these countries "football" was often included in the names of the earliest leagues and governing bodies of the sport, but as that word became increasingly associated with other domestic forms of the game, soccer became more widely used in those countries.
In the United States, American football is the most dominant code of football in the country and the word football in the U.S. is used to refer to that sport. Association football is referred to as soccer.
The sport\'s governing body is the United States Soccer Federation, however it was originally called the U.S. Football Association, and was formed in 1913 by the merger of the American Football Association and the American Amateur Football Association. The word "soccer" was added to the name in 1945, making it the U.S. Soccer Football Association, and it did not drop the word "football" until 1974, when it assumed its current name.
A similar situation exists in Canada, where the term "football" (or le football in French) refers only to Canadian football or the closely related American game. Even in French-speaking Quebec, the game is known as le soccer and the provincial governing body is the Fédération de Soccer du Québec. This is different from other Francophone countries; for example, in FIFA, a French acronym, the "FA" stands for football association, French for "Association football".
In Australian English, the word football usually means either Australian rules football or rugby league, depending on the regional background of the speaker. Rugby union, which is not as popular as rugby league in Australia, is also sometimes referred to as "football". Soccer is the name used for Association football by most Australians. The usage of football to mean Australian rules or rugby football was already well-established when the first reports of Association football in Australia occurred, in 1880. However, the popular usages are not fixed in any legal form, such as a trademark on the word "football", and by the late 20th century, a few Australian authorities began to use the word football in relation to soccer. In 2004, the Australian Soccer Association changed its name to Football Federation Australia (FFA), and announced that the official name of the sport in Australia had been changed to "football". As part of a large reform of football, The FFA mounted a campaign for the new name to be adopted by its subsidiary state organizations and clubs, many of whom have changed their names and terminology. This was met with antipathy and bemusement by some followers of Australian rules and rugby league and the game is still mostly known as soccer. Some media sources adopted the new usage or used qualifiers such as "the world game", to avoid confusion with the more popular codes of football. However, most media outlets have not adopted the new usage. The national team is still commonly known by its longstanding nickname, The Socceroos.
Les Murray, sports broadcaster and until recently, SBS\'s Sporting Director, coined the term The World Game when referring to football. The term is also used as the name of the SBS football series The World Game, currently broadcast on Sunday afternoons.
In New Zealand English, association football is usually called soccer. "Football" usually refers to rugby union, but can also refer to rugby league. It is, however, considered inappropriate to refer to "football" without supporting context as to which code the speaker means, so as to avoid confusion. Therefore, while it is common for "football" (or the slang term "footy") to be used to refer to rugby union, it is usually not used otherwise. New Zealand\'s governing body for the sport recently changed its official name from "New Zealand Soccer" to "New Zealand Football"
In the Republic of Ireland, the sport is sometimes called soccer to distinguish it from Gaelic football; though this is not exclusive nor official as the governing federation for the sport is named the Football Association of Ireland. It is common for association football fans in the Republic of Ireland to refer to their game as "football" and Gaelic football as simply "Gaelic".
In South Africa, "soccer" is the more common name, used by all cultural groups when speaking English. The domestic first division is the Premier Soccer League and both in conversation and the media (see e.g. The Sowetan or Independent Online), the term "soccer" is used almost exclusively. Despite this, the country\'s national association is called the South African Football Association and "football" might occasionally be used in official contexts.
Football, in its modern form, was exported by the British to much of the rest of the world and many of these nations adopted this common English term for the sport into their own language. This was usually done in one of two ways: either by directly importing the word itself, or by translating its constituent parts, foot and ball. Most Romance languages use the word football, albeit with a different pronunciation and sometimes a different spelling: the Spanish fútbol [ˈfutbol] or balompié, Portuguese: futebol, Romanian: fotbal, Galician: fútbol, Catalan: futbol and the French, le football is often shortened to le foot. Similarly, the Russian word is futbol (футбол), the Turkish word is futbol and the Albanian word is futboll. The modern Bulgarian name is futbol (футбол), though the sport was initially called ritnitop (ритнитоп, "kickball") as it was introduced in the 1890s; footballers are still sometimes mockingly called ritnitopkovtsi (ритнитопковци, "ball kickers") today.
In some languages in which a local word is used for the game, the English word "football" is used for American football. This is the case in German, where association football is known as Fußball and the peak body for American football is known as the German Football League.
As in German, the word is usually also calqued in other members of the Germanic family of languages: for example, Dutch: voetbal, Norwegian: fotball, Swedish: fotboll, and Danish: fodbold. In Icelandic, the most common word is the invention knattspyrna (knatt- = ball- and spyrna = kicking), although the calque fótbolti is also used.
This also applies to Finnish (jalkapallo), Greek podosfero (ποδόσφαιρο), Arabic (kurat al qadam) and Hebrew kaduregel (כדורגל). In Polish both ways (futbol and piłka nożna) are used, as well as in Czech (fotbal or kopaná (meaning kicking)). The official name in Slovak is futbal (fucík in common language) and in Hungarian there are futball or labdarúgás (meaning ball-kicking), but foci is used in the common language.
In Italy, football is called calcio (translates as kick), from calciare meaning to kick. This is due to the game\'s resemblance to Calcio Fiorentino, a 16th century ceremonial Florentine court ritual, that has now been revived under the name il calcio storico or calcio in costume (historical kick or kick in costume).
In Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian, the sport is called nogomet. In Serbian and Croatian, the word is derived from "noga" (meaning "leg") and "met", which is a suffix derived from the word "metati" (meaning "to sweep"), hence "sweeping the ball using legs". In Slovenian, "noga" has the same meaning as in Serbian and Croatian, while "met" means "throw", hence "throwing (the ball) with legs".
In Georgian, the name pekhburti (ფეხბურთი) is used, from the words for foot, pekhi (ფეხი) and ball, burti (ბურთი), thus literally, football.
In Japan, because of American influence following World War II, use of the term sakkā (サッカー) is more common than that of the term futtobōru (フットボール), although the latter term would seem to be gaining popularity.[citation needed] For instance the governing body of the game is known as the Japan Football Association. Before the war, the Sino-Japanese derived term shūkyū (蹴球, literally kick-ball) was in common use, but as with many kanji-derived terms, it quickly fell by the wayside following the war.
In Korea, football is called chook gu (축구).
In Chinese, the term 足球 (Hanyu Pinyin: zúqiú, Cantonese: juk kau) is used. The term, a calque, literally means football (足=foot, 球=ball), and is always associated with association football. Rugby is known as ganlanqiu (橄榄球, olive ball). American football can be referred to as a type of zuqiu, but it is more commonly seen as a type of ganlanqiu.
In Thai, the word football (ฟุตบอล) is used.
In Vietnamese, the term "đá banh" is used to denote "football". Its literal meaning is "kicking ball".
In Malay, the sport is called "bola sepak" which is a combination of the words ball (bola) and kick (sepak).
Aside from the name of the game itself, other foreign words based on English football terms include versions in many languages of the word goal (often gol in Romance languages) and schútte (Basel) or tschuutte (Zürich), derived from the English shoot, meaning \'to play football\' in German-speaking Switzerland. Also, words derived from kick has found their way into German (noun Kicker) and Swedish (verb kicka). In France le penalty means a penalty kick, however the phrase tir au but is often used in the context of a penalty shootout. In Brazilian Portuguese, due to the pervading presence of football in Brazilian culture, many words related to the sport have found their way into everyday language, including the verb chutar (from shoot) - which originally meant "to kick a football", but is now the most widespread equivalent of the English verb "to kick".
In the first half of the 20th century, in Spanish and Portuguese, new words were created to substitute "football", balompié (balón and pie meaning "ball" and "foot") and ludopédio (from words meaning "game" and "foot") respectively, but progressively these words could not replace the English one and now are only used in club names such as Real Betis Balompié and Albacete Balompié.
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