<P> American football is usually known by that name or "gridiron", a name made familiar to a wider British audience by Channel 4, when it showed American football on Sunday evenings in the period 1982--1992 . </P> <P> In the United States, the word football usually refers to the sport of American football . As in Canada, football is used inclusively of Canadian football with American and Canadian football generally seen as two variants of the same sport . The term "North American football" is sometimes used to refer to both games together . </P> <P> The sport of association football is commonly called "soccer" in the United States . The word derives from "association"--as in the Football Association--in contrast to "rugger", or rugby football . It is English in origin, and caught on in the United States to distinguish the game from the locally better known American football; it also became predominant in other countries where another sport is known as football, such as Australia with Australian rules football . The term was in use in Britain throughout the early 20th century and became especially prominent in the decades after World War II, but by the 1980s British fans had begun avoiding the term, largely because it was seen as an Americanism . </P> <P> Both rugby union and rugby league are generally known as rugby . Union is the more commonly played variant in the United States . Rugby league and Gaelic football have very small, albeit growing, numbers of adherents . </P>

Where did the name american football come from
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