The meaning of the words

My friend Souleymane is answering himself in his own writing blog, why U.S. people use the word soccer instead of football? And I would like to help him. I´ve been finding out and there are several theories about the same topic.

Maybe you need first what soccer/football is, here we go. It´s a sport where 22 people are playing in a big grass rectangular field to get the ball, and they only can hit it with the feet. The objective is score a goal to the other team. This is the origin of the name foot-ball.

One of them says that the word soccer comes of the Latin word “soccus”. The meaning of this word is shoe. This shoe seems like the boots that soccer players use to play soccer today. The other theory comes from England. When the English created, designed and invented football (soccer) in 1863, they did one association to unify the rules and specifications of the game. This association was called “Association Football”. When the football arrived to the U.S., American people had the custom in the American English to add the suffix –er to all the words. And they called their own Football Association “asoccer”, and finally over the years called it soccer.

Like all theories in the world you can or can´t believe it. I don´t know which one is correct or incorrect. Maybe it can be that no one is correct. But I hope that you, my friend can have an idea about the origin of the word soccer. What do you think about these two theories? There is one more persuasive or powerful than the other one?

Maybe you, dear reader, know words of your country or your own lenguage, that American people have changed the word and they use one different but it means the same thing than yours.

Take care.

Fer2.