The cultural differences at large

So, its been more than a year and a half that I have moved to Canada (“North America” for the better sake of our discussion) and as much as I fell in love with the beauty of this part of the world and the warmth of the people here, I noticed some interesting cultural differences here. Admirable levels of social etiquette like greetings from the bus drivers — people holding the door for you to pass — a highly respected queue system etc. For some strange reason, every girl on the street appears to be wearing a black legging and there isn’t a sentence (English) that finishes without the word “like” 10 times in it . Random smiles by strangers on eye contacts (unless you are walking on the street while using your phone- surprisingly, it turns them totally off, even if you were far enough not to collide :s).

The Game of Names?

Overall, all of this has been interesting but then in the world of sports (which I love), I found some big time puzzling differences. “Table Tennis” is called “Ping Pong”; “Ice Hockey” ?? “Ice”?? Nopee.. it is “Hockey” and the Hockey that I knew (the Field Hockey) is more often a exclamation as in “Oh do they also play Hockey on a turf field??”; Football is called soccer (more on this later in this blog). Baseball and “American Football” are sports that picked up only in this part of the world while the sport which the rest of the world dies for i.e. Football aka Soccer, has largely remained on the prairies when it comes to popularity in North America. While the research on this contrast in sports interest between North Americans and the rest of the world is a thing for another day, I will retreat and focus on our main topic- the curious case of Football/Soccer.

Soccer- When and why?

Not examining Football’s failed popularity here but the prime question- Why was Football renamed to Soccer in North America. A University of Michigan professor conducted a research on this topic and concluded that the roots to this problem lie not in America but in Britain (the place where this sport was born). Surprised? So was I. Back in 1800s when “Football Association” was formed in Britain (and is yet the governing body of the game in England), they thought of shortening the then used names of “rugby football” and “association football” as “rugger” and “soccer” respectively so that it’s easier to connote and at the same time, the few confusions on the word “Football” is avoided (even though the masses were addressing “association football” as football only).

Now, with the passing years, while Rugby didn’t face any conflict of addressing due to it’s modest popularity, football (soccer) garnered a lot of global fame and got into some naming conundrums in places like North America and Australia (refer the image above). In these places, customization continued to form a hybrid of football and rugby which was started to be called as American/Australian Football or simply “Football”. They could call this hybrid as Football because they knew the word “Soccer” being used by Brits could be used for the the other game (actual football) and that’s what they did. The subsequent spread of the supremacy of American football in the continent eventually resulted in Football being widely termed as Soccer. As of today, the Brits often mock Americans for calling Football as Soccer but a lot of them are unaware that they themselves coined this term and in fact were using it until as late as the 1960s. As the image of American culture kept on getting tarnished in Britain, they stopped addressing Football as Soccer as it was starting to be looked upon as an American thing by the Britishers. So, well, it isn’t the fairest thing anymore to blame the North Americans for the whole Soccer saga.

Conclusion:

Canadians have to be one of the nicest group of humans and I have only good things to say about them; however, when it comes to Sports, I always end up having non agreeing debates with my Canadian friends- those Am. Football and Hockey Vs. Football (soccer) fights (LOL, I love it)!! And yes, the name is “Football” and it is the best sport in the world (followed by 4+ billion people in the world, basketball comes distant second with around 1.2 billion followers and Am. Football or Hockey isn’t even close).

What do you think? How should the game be called as and isn’t it time our North American buddies start loving the beautiful game more??? Please comment and let’s have a candid discussion