Legend has it that Charles Wredford Brown, an Oxford student during the time of first Football Association, was the first person to use the word Soccer. When friends asked him if he’d come play a game of Rugger (nickname for Rugby), to which Charles replied he preferred to play Soccer instead.

The inventor of the nickname is said to be Charles Wredford Brown, who was an Oxford student around the time of Association Football’s inception. Legend has it, in 1863 shortly after the creation of Association Football, Wredford-Brown had some friends who asked him if he’d come play a game of “Rugger”, to which he replied he preferred “Soccer”.

The term soccer comes from Oxford "-er" slang, which was prevalent at the University of Oxford in England from about 1875, and is thought to have been borrowed from the slang of Rugby School. Initially spelled assoccer, it was later reduced to the modern spelling.

Szymanski wrote that English aristocratic boys at Cambridge and Oxford happened to have a fad of adding "er" to words and created shorthand terms "rugger" and "soccer" to differentiate between the types of football.

But what most people don’t know is that the word “soccer” is not in fact an American invention. On the contrary, it was an import from England, and one that was commonly used there until relatively recently. At least, that’s the argument made by Stefan Szymanski, a professor of sports economics at the University of Michigan.