The Origin1 of the Word “Soccer” “英式足球”一词的由来

张宁 编译

When Americans， and certain others， call “football” “soccer”， you should know that it was the British that invented the word and it was also one of the first names of what we now mainly know of as “football”.

当美国人和其他人称“足球”为“英式足球”时，你应该知道，是英国人发明了“英式足球”这个词，它也是我们现在主要所说的“足球”运动最初的名字之一。

In fact， in the early days of the sport among the upper echelons2 of British society， the proper term for the sport was “soccer”.

事实上，在该体育运动出现的初期，英国上层社会，对这项运动的正确称呼是“英式足球（soccer）”。

With records as far back as 1004 B.C.， there were quite a lot of “football” sports. Being played popularly throughout the world and of course， England， many of these sports had similar rules.

早在公元前1004年，就有许多关于类似“足球（football）”运动的记录了。在世界上，尤其在英国，“足球”运动盛行。许多类似的“足球”运动都有相似的规则。

In England， most of the earliest forms of football were named thus， not because you kicked a ball with your foot， but because they were played on foot. Peasants played most of their sports on foot; aristocrats3 played most of theirs on horseback. Thus， games played on foot were called “football”， whether they had anything to do with kicking a ball or not. In fact， many of the earliest forms of football were about carrying balls and passing some opposing4 team players to get across goal lines.

在英国，早期大多数被称为“足球”的运动得名的原因，并不是因为要用脚去踢球，而是因为它们是步行进行的。农民的大部分运动是步行进行的;贵族的大部分运动是骑马进行的。因此，步行的球类运动都被称为“足球”，无论是否是用脚踢球。事实上，许多早期的“足球”形式都是为了越过球门线，抱着球过掉敌队球员。

On October 26th， 1863， a group of teams in England decided to get together and create a standard5 set of rules which would be used at all their matches. They formed the rules for “Association6 Football”， with the “Association” different from the many other types of football sports in England， such as “rugby7 football”.

1863年10月26日，英格兰的一队球队决定聚在一起，制定一套标准的规则，这套规则将被用于他们所有的比赛中。他们制定了“协会足球（Association Football）”的规则，“协会”使之区别于英国许多其他类型的足球运动，比如橄榄球。

British school boys of the day liked to nickname everything， which is still somewhat common. They also liked to add the ending “er” to these nicknames. Thus rugby was， at that time， popularly called “rugger”. Association football was then much better known as “assoccer”， which quickly just became “soccer” and sometimes “soccer football”.

当时英国的学童喜欢给每样东西起绰号，这到现在都是普遍情况。他们还喜欢在这些昵称后面加上“-er”。因此，在当时，橄榄球被普遍称为“rugger”，协会足球被称为“assoccer”，很快又变成了“soccer”，有时甚至被叫做“soccer football”。

The inventor of the nickname is said to be Charles Wredford Brown， who was an Oxford student around the time of Association Footballs inception8. Legend9 has it， in 1863 shortly after the creation of Association Football， Wredford Brown had some friends who asked him if hed come play a game of “rugger”， to which he replied he preferred “soccer”. Whether that storys true or not， the name caught on from around that point on.

這个绰号的发明者据说是查尔斯·雷德福德·布朗，他在英式足球诞生时是牛津大学的学生。传说在1863年，英式足球创立不久，雷德福德·布朗的几个朋友问他要不要来玩“rugger”，他回答说他更想玩“soccer”。不管这个故事是真是假，这个名字从那时起就流行起来了。

The game gradually spread throughout the world under the lower class name of “football”， rather than “soccer” as the “gentlemen” called it. The problem was， though， that a lot of other countries of the world already had popular sports of their own they called “football”， such as the United States， Canada， Ireland， Australia， New Zealand， and South Africa， to name a few. In these countries， the name “soccer” was and， in some， still is preferred for this reason.

这项运动逐渐以下层阶级的名称“足球”，而不是“绅士们”所说的“英式足球”的名字，在全世界传播开来。不过，问题是，世界上许多其他国家已经有了被他们自己称之为“足球”的运动，比如美国、加拿大、爱尔兰、澳大利亚、新西兰和南非等等。因此，在这些国家，“英式足球”这个名字从过去到现在仍然是首选。

（英语原文摘自：www.todayifoundout.com）