The Origin1 of the Word “Soccer” “英式足球”一詞的由來

張寧 編譯

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”.

當美國人和其他人稱“足球”為“英式足球”時，你應該知道，是英國人發明了“英式足球”這個詞，它也是我們現在主要所說的“足球”運動最初的名字之一。

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

事實上，在該體育運動出現的初期，英國上層社會，對這項運動的正確稱呼是“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，就有許多關于類似“足球（football）”運動的記錄了。在世界上，尤其在英國，“足球”運動盛行。許多類似的“足球”運動都有相似的規則。

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.

在英國，早期大多數被稱為“足球”的運動得名的原因，并不是因為要用腳去踢球，而是因為它們是步行進行的。農民的大部分運動是步行進行的;貴族的大部分運動是騎馬進行的。因此，步行的球類運動都被稱為“足球”，無論是否是用腳踢球。事實上，許多早期的“足球”形式都是為了越過球門線，抱著球過掉敵隊球員。

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，英格蘭的一隊球隊決定聚在一起，制定一套標準的規則，這套規則將被用于他們所有的比賽中。他們制定了“協會足球（Association Football）”的規則，“協會”使之區別于英國許多其他類型的足球運動，比如橄欖球。

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”.

當時英國的學童喜歡給每樣東西起綽號，這到現在都是普遍情況。他們還喜歡在這些昵稱后面加上“-er”。因此，在當時，橄欖球被普遍稱為“rugger”，協會足球被稱為“assoccer”，很快又變成了“soccer”，有時甚至被叫做“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.

這個綽號的發明者據說是查爾斯·雷德福德·布朗，他在英式足球誕生時是牛津大學的學生。傳說在1863年，英式足球創立不久，雷德福德·布朗的幾個朋友問他要不要來玩“rugger”，他回答說他更想玩“soccer”。……