I'd imagine any country with a pre-existing sport called "football" would tend to call it soccer.

Also, soccer was invented by the English, let the virus spread, then switched back to football.

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

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.

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

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).

  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.).

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.

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.

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-iPhones.

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.

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.

You can’t really expect people in all places to use the same words for things.

It may also surprise you to learn that water closets are called restrooms in other countries that speak English.

If you're the type who considers the word toilet vulgar, you'd likely say "lavatory" instead. If you're trying to be actually polite rather than just signal poshness, you'd make a discrete exit without stating your exact excretory intention.

In fact no, we shouldn’t, because different languages and dialects have different words for things, and that’s just a fact of life.

This phenomenon isn’t unique to English, by the way. Every language spoken in more than one country (AFAIK) has some words that vary between countries.

Your argument is a bit ridiculous IMO, it’s like saying neovim should merge every patch that gets merged to vim.

of all the arguments in the world this is the worst one. A nationalist leftover reminding us that while the internet has potential for global unity, someone will forcibly drag it down to worldly borders

Just means "grab your football" in Spain, but means something completely different in Argentina ;)

I'd assume is the same in Argentina, but I do not know that for certain.

But I've heard a lot of Americans say "no it's called soccer" when they heard the term football

FIFA is "Fédération internationale de football association".

I never claimed that French people couldn’t call things whatever they like in their own language :)