why is football called football

The word “football” originally referred to games played on foot (not on horseback), where a ball was moved toward a goal—often with the feet, but not exclusively—so the name stuck even as different codes like soccer and American football evolved.

Old meaning of “football”

Historically, “football” didn’t mean “only using your feet”; it meant a ball game played on foot by ordinary people rather than on horseback by nobles.

In medieval and early modern Europe, various rough “folk football” games involved kicking, carrying, and scrapping over a ball in fields and streets, and all of these fell under the broad label of football.

How soccer got the name

In 1863, England’s Football Association created official rules for what was called “association football,” distinguishing it from “rugby football,” where carrying the ball was allowed.

Students and journalists shortened “association” to “assoc.”, then slang-ified it to “soccer,” so the kicking game most of the world calls football also picked up the nickname soccer.

Why American football kept “football”

American football grew in the 19th century from a mix of soccer-style and rugby-style football brought from Europe, at first looking more like a hybrid running and kicking game.

Because it was seen as just another variety of the existing football family—alongside soccer and rugby—Americans simply kept calling it football , even after rules evolved to feature more handling and less kicking.

So why the confusing name today?

Over time, each region picked one code as “the” football: in most of the world, that is association football (soccer), while in the U.S. and a few other places it is the American code.

The shared origin explains the shared name: all these sports descend from the older family of football games , so even if they use hands a lot today, the historical label never changed.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.