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Comment by borissk | Hacker News Reader

Football is kind of a logical name for one game and pretty illogical for another.

US should just adopt the metric system and start calling their sport handegg :)

Both games evolved from the collection of related pre-modern games that were all called “football”, as did rugby, Australian football, and some others.

In every English-speaking country, whichever of these related games is most popular is simply called “football”.

It’s unclear whether the name derives from kicking the ball with the foot (which happens to a greater or lesser extent in all such games), or from the fact that they’re played on foot (rather than e.g. on horseback).

On the etymology of "soccer":

  1889, socca, later socker (1891), soccer (1895), originally university slang (with jocular formation -er (3)), from a shortened form of Assoc., abbreviation of association in Football Association (as opposed to Rugby football); compare rugger. An unusual method of formation, but those who did it perhaps shied away from making a name out of the first three letters of Assoc. Compare 1890s English schoolboy slang leccer, from lecture (n.).

Source: https://www.etymonline.com/word/soccer

To your point, the first college football game in the US was, simultaneously, the first college soccer game because it took place before the split between soccer and rugby, and the rules were those drafted by the Football Association in England. The rugby rules were adopted by Canadian colleges, who went on to play against American colleges, who adopted the rugby rules and added the initial changes that created American football.

A gridiron football is still clearly a ball in function, even if not spherical, just like how a rugby ball is still called a ball.

The word "football" has been used to describe games played without kicking for centuries. A possible etymology is that it means not a game played with the feet, but a game played on foot. It could describe any of the games played by peasants, as opposed to the equestrian sports (racing, polo, dressage) played by aristocrats.

The game of handball is quite popular here in the Netherlands, differing from football in using hands instead of feet.

> A possible etymology is that it means not a game played with the feet, but a game played on foot.

As opposed to all those other popular ball games which are played sitting down?

If football rules allow all body parts except hands then a logical name would be Nohandball.

Footheadchestknee ball doesn't quite roll off the tongue as well, so nohandball it is.

≥ US should just adopt the metric system

I just erased a long rant about this, because no one needs to read another one.

But I'll summarize: Our refusal to adopt the metric system is really a symptom of everything that's wrong with the country today. I blame organized religion.

I think at one time, we probably went our own way because we were first or best.

But today it just seems hardheaded. And it's not just metric...you have ANSI vs ISO, electrical systems, 4g and 5g radio bands, etc. With a world population 20 times the US population, I foresee a lot more companies just deciding it doesn't make financial sense to bother with the US market. We already see that with smartphones.

> I blame organized religion

You have no idea how accurate and profound your statement is. The mid 1800s religious extremism still survives in the US and plagues its public discourse and institutions in the form of anti-intellectualism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism#United_St...

The American anti-intellectualism is far stronger compared to all the forms of anti-intellectualism across the world, and its surprisingly wide-reaching - a lot of the anti-intellectual behaviors of the religious American crowd of 1850s survive today and manifest themselves in different forms. From opposing science to conservatism in silly things like the resistance to the metric system and more.

French intellectuals want us to divide by the number of fingers we have, because man is the measure of all things. They’re also in league with mathematicians and some foreign Arabian number system.

English engineers much prefer a 12-based system where you can design, construct and build easily— dividing measurements by 2, 3, and 4– where practicality is foremost.

I do think French atheism is at the root of it yes.

P.S. completely trolling/kidding!

P.P.S. Long before the metric system, the French were calling a dozen dozen “grosse”. The prejudice goes long back and it isn’t from us Angle-ophones!

> the French were calling a dozen dozen “grosse”. The prejudice goes long back and it isn’t from us Angle-ophones!

Hell yeah it is - the never-ending English, later British propaganda against France goes back 600 years. Against Spain, it goes back 500 years. A lot of that seems to have been carried over to its former colonies.

Those dang mathematicians with their factoring.

You can have the best of both worlds: when I'm fixing my daughter's curtain rail, I use mm to measure distance from the window frame because if I use fractions of an inch I'm far more likely to bugger up the maths. But if I want to tell someone my height, I will use feet and inches as those are more human-scale and convenient than metric. For packaging and products there seems no logical reason to not cite both, although the EU mandated metric-only

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