So far, there is some helpful information in the responses, but there are still a lot of misleading and incorrect claims.
One of the most often asked questions is why football is called football. Is football, in reality, football? Is it football or American football?
It is difficult to say when or where soccer first emerged, but now recognized as a universal sport played by people worldwide. The fascinating aspect is studying how American football developed.
History of American football
The term “football” has international ancestors, much like the game itself. American football can be traced back to two European cousins, soccer and rugby, according to historians. Both started as kickball games.
Soccer, the world’s most common sport, was once known as “association football.” Newspapers were looking for a shorter-term coined the term “assoc.” The name quickly shortened to “soc” and then expanded to “soccer.”
The names will inevitably be abbreviated. Linguistically creative students at the University of Oxford in the 1880s distinguished between the sports of “rugger” (rugby football) and “assoccer” (association football). The latter term further shortened to “soccer” (sometimes spelled “socker”), and the name quickly spread beyond the campus. However, “soccer” never became much more than a nickname in Great Britain.
What is the origin ofAmerican football?
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One of the most well-known distinctions between British and American English is that the sport known as football in the United Kingdom known in the United States as soccer. Since soccer originated in England, it is often considered an American phenomenon.
While football-like games have existed for centuries, the sport as we know it today is mainly credit to England’s newly founded Football Association, which published a set of rules in 1863. It was the most popular game of its kind in the country at the time, but it wasn’t the only one. Rugby football was a variant that required players to hold and run with the ball to advance it toward the target. It did name after an English boarding school. As a result, the game played under the Football Association rules became known as association football.
It’s not that soccer came first and rugby came second; instead, they were a strange mix that came together to form one football game. Rugby and soccer were born in the United Kingdom, but it wasn’t until the late 1800s that sports were ultimately codified and segregated. That’s when the two games became what we know them as today.
Meanwhile, in the late 1800s, a sport combining rugby and association football elements arose in the United States. It quickly became more successful than the two of them. Gridiron football was the full name, but most people didn’t bother with the first letter. As a result, American association football players began to refer to their sport as soccer. The United States Football Association, founded in the 1910s as the official governing body of American soccer, changed its name to the United States Soccer Football Association in 1945 and eventually dropped the word “football.” Soccer had been more than a nickname.
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Conclusion- why is American football called football?
As you can see, American Football’s name does not relate to the fact that it is primarily a foot-based ballgame. Yes, there is kicking in American football. Still, the sport’s name comes from its roots as a variant of Rugby Football, although it has developed into a somewhat different American version. Rugby-style football and soccer-style football all made their way to America in the end. As a consequence, a hybrid of the two games was born in America. Since the American game was almost the same as the European version, it was dubbing football.