The rules of association football were codified in the United Kingdom by the
Football Association in 1863, and the name
association football was coined to distinguish the game from the other versions of football played at the time, such as
rugby football. The word
soccer is an abbreviation of
association (from
assoc.) and first appeared in universities in the 1880s.
[1][2] An early usage can be found in an English 1892 periodical.
[3] The word is sometimes credited to
Charles Wreford Brown, an Oxford University student said to have been fond of shortened forms such as
brekkers for breakfast and
rugger for
rugby football (see
Oxford -er). Clive Toye noted "A quirk of British culture is the permanent need to familiarise names by shortening them. ... Toye [said] 'They took the third, fourth and fifth letters of Association and called it SOCcer.'”
[4]
The term
association football has never been widely used, although in Britain some clubs in
rugby football strongholds adopted the suffix
Association Football Club (
A.F.C.) to avoid confusion with the dominant sport in their area, and
FIFA, the world governing body for the sport, is a French-language acronym of "Fédération Internationale de Football Association" – the International Federation of Association Football. "Soccer football" is used less often than it once was: the
United States Soccer Federation was known as the United States Soccer Football Association from 1945 until 1974, when it adopted its current name and the
Canadian Soccer Association was known as the Canadian Soccer Football Association from 1958 to 1971. Some soccer clubs, in Australia for example, still contain the words "soccer " in their titles.[
