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Comment by jjeaff | Hacker News Reader

In Spanish, they call it fútbol, rather than football, and in Chinese, I think it is pronounced something like Zúqiú. Most Southeastern Asian countries don't call it football or a variation thereof. Australians and parts of the British isles call it soccer I believe as well.

Things are named and pronounced differently in different languages.

The fact is, "football" was already taken in the American vocabulary by the time soccer rose to popularity in the US.

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No part of the British Isles calls it soccer. The game in its current form [1], and the name "football" [2], were invented there.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football#Establishment_of_mode...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_(word)#Etymology

In Northern Ireland I've sometimes hear it called soccer to differentiate with Gaelic football, which is just called football by some groups.

"Soccer" is an abbreviation of British origin, and was widely used throughout the British isles until at least the late 1970s.

source: http://ns.umich.edu/Releases/2014/June14/Its-football-not-so...

Isn't the spanish version just Football, but in Spanish?

Eh, it might as well be the equivalent of "soccer" (a meaningless made up word), since the Spanish word for neither "foot" nor "ball" are in the name. (In contrast to Chinese's zuqiu which is literally "foot" "ball").

Soccer is short for association football, formed analogously to rugger, which is short for Rugby football.

Another name for the sport in Spanish is "balompié", which comes from "balón" (ball) and "pie" (foot), but it's rarely used.

In a sense. "Fùt" is not a Spanish word, and "bol" means "bowl." They just use the English word for the game, written phonetically in Spanish.

> and parts of the British isles call it soccer I believe as well.

The UK has a lot of slang. Soccer is a slang term sometimes used in informal settings.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/8rnuyh/older_users_i...

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