Hockey Invented In England ... Not Canada
- Thread starter LadyStanley
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Well, I did say I'd await reading the book before making further comment. I ordered it last week and so it will probably be here soon. I did return to some online searching just for the fun of it, since there are so many aspects you can look at (e.g. variant spellings of hockey in different periods). As a result of this, I've gathered further "pre-book" thoughts, which I will mention here.
First, I now believe that no form of choule, of which the standard spelling was soule, a game played in Normandy and elsewhere in parts of the west and north of France, was likely called hocquet, i.e., in France. It is possible of course that some people, in some or even one area, did call it that, but when you check books on the names of French games of the medieval and Middle Ages periods, hocquet is not mentioned, with an apparent (but not real) exception I'll mention in a moment. You find names like choule, chole, soule, crosse.
Therefore, while I still feel that choule-crosse - the game - very likely did come into England with the Norman Invasion or after in the early years of English-French intercourse, the naming of the game probably happened in England. Hoket is in Anglo-Norman dictionaries so the name may well have been borrowed from hocquet meaning a shepherd's crook, but also you can't rule out an Anglo-Saxon origin due to the common root of hok in Indo-European. I do incline still to the French origin, or Anglo-Norman origin, of the word because the "ey" ending of hockey does sound like the silent "et" in hocquet or hoket.
In one late 1800's source, a French historian's article on the games of France in the Middle Ages is summarized as dealing with soule, malle, crosse, and "hocquet". When I saw that, I thought, oh, hockey must be French in origin since there was a French game called hocquet, a form of soule. But if you check the article the historian actually wrote, he didn't use the term "hocquet". He wrote rather that "le hockey" in England is derived from soule, he never used the term "hocquet". The editor or author of the article reviewing the historian's article used that term, either to francize so to speak an English term or make a sly joke of some kind. At most this is speculation that a form of hockey was called "hocquet", but again there appears, from what I can tell, no evidence any game in France was ever called that. Here is the actual article written by Simeon Luce, the historian mentioned:
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/crai_0065-0536_1889_num_33_6_69720
(See pp. 512-513 in particular).
The other area of interest is that the spelling "hawkey" pops up in New England around the 1840's in at least one novel, in "hawkey-stick", being used clearly to denote the stick used to play hockey. Well, I'd think it unlikely this came in from England after the 1760's. I'd think rather - again it's just interpretation but it remains that either way - that it came with the Puritans. Why would a relatively obscure game, not even commonly called hockey in England until the 1800's, be played as a recent import in New England? The odd spelling, similar to the West Sussex hawkey, suggests to me a common old provincial origin in England. True, for whatever reason, the term bandy was used for a long time to describe the game, but this alternate (as I apprehend) regional term finally took over, it's hard at this juncture to say why. "England" in New England was called that for a reason…
Gary
First, I now believe that no form of choule, of which the standard spelling was soule, a game played in Normandy and elsewhere in parts of the west and north of France, was likely called hocquet, i.e., in France. It is possible of course that some people, in some or even one area, did call it that, but when you check books on the names of French games of the medieval and Middle Ages periods, hocquet is not mentioned, with an apparent (but not real) exception I'll mention in a moment. You find names like choule, chole, soule, crosse.
Therefore, while I still feel that choule-crosse - the game - very likely did come into England with the Norman Invasion or after in the early years of English-French intercourse, the naming of the game probably happened in England. Hoket is in Anglo-Norman dictionaries so the name may well have been borrowed from hocquet meaning a shepherd's crook, but also you can't rule out an Anglo-Saxon origin due to the common root of hok in Indo-European. I do incline still to the French origin, or Anglo-Norman origin, of the word because the "ey" ending of hockey does sound like the silent "et" in hocquet or hoket.
In one late 1800's source, a French historian's article on the games of France in the Middle Ages is summarized as dealing with soule, malle, crosse, and "hocquet". When I saw that, I thought, oh, hockey must be French in origin since there was a French game called hocquet, a form of soule. But if you check the article the historian actually wrote, he didn't use the term "hocquet". He wrote rather that "le hockey" in England is derived from soule, he never used the term "hocquet". The editor or author of the article reviewing the historian's article used that term, either to francize so to speak an English term or make a sly joke of some kind. At most this is speculation that a form of hockey was called "hocquet", but again there appears, from what I can tell, no evidence any game in France was ever called that. Here is the actual article written by Simeon Luce, the historian mentioned:
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/crai_0065-0536_1889_num_33_6_69720
(See pp. 512-513 in particular).
The other area of interest is that the spelling "hawkey" pops up in New England around the 1840's in at least one novel, in "hawkey-stick", being used clearly to denote the stick used to play hockey. Well, I'd think it unlikely this came in from England after the 1760's. I'd think rather - again it's just interpretation but it remains that either way - that it came with the Puritans. Why would a relatively obscure game, not even commonly called hockey in England until the 1800's, be played as a recent import in New England? The odd spelling, similar to the West Sussex hawkey, suggests to me a common old provincial origin in England. True, for whatever reason, the term bandy was used for a long time to describe the game, but this alternate (as I apprehend) regional term finally took over, it's hard at this juncture to say why. "England" in New England was called that for a reason…
Gary
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Here is a review, from the late 1880's in a French journal, of Simeon Luce's article on the games of the era of Charles V:
http://books.google.ca/books?id=e2V...=0CDIQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=hocquet Luce&f=false
As you see, the term hocquet is used and one would reasonably conclude Luce used that expression, but he did not, when you read the actual article. (It is fairly long and I did not read every line, but I could not see where "hocquet" is used by Luce).
Gary
http://books.google.ca/books?id=e2V...=0CDIQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=hocquet Luce&f=false
As you see, the term hocquet is used and one would reasonably conclude Luce used that expression, but he did not, when you read the actual article. (It is fairly long and I did not read every line, but I could not see where "hocquet" is used by Luce).
Gary
Uncle Rotter
Registered User
Yes thanks. The "Caleb" books were an American childrens' book series written by Jacob Abbott. The earliest one where hawkey is mentioned seems to be from 1839 and the term is used to describe the stick, as in hawkey-stick, but also as a noun for the stick, a "hawkey" (or hawky). Also, if you look at the references in the various books, it is described as cane-length, which is interesting because some of those old British and Dutch paintings or illustrations show a stick like that sometimes raised from above the shoulder. Some hurly sticks were like that and crosse sticks from what I've seen online in old images. This is the mallet-type, closer to what is used for croquet or shuffleboard or even polo than hockey today. The old hawkey-stick clearly evolved into a longer stick held with two hands. This is another reason I think the term in New England must be very old because it doesn't resemble in all respects the longer stick which was being used by the mid-1800's in England and Canada for ice hockey.
Gary
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Just a kind of side observation, but for those who can read the Luce article, you may be struck, as I was, by his continual observations on the frequent violence in soule and similar games. Luce constantly returns to this theme. He explains that regional or other rivalries were channeled in the games. I believe (this from memory) he stated that in one of the Royal prohibitions of the game, games between regions were banned but not within one, thus an attempt to control inordinate violence due to regional rivalry. When we think of fighting in hockey today, this makes one realize how old the issue is. You see it too in European football, certainly for the spectators, a game with probable connections to the old "soule a pied" or soule played with the foot vs. a stick.
Many of the early British writers on bandy and hockey say the same thing.
"Plus que ca change, plus que c'est la meme chose".
Gary
Many of the early British writers on bandy and hockey say the same thing.
"Plus que ca change, plus que c'est la meme chose".
Gary
Now that I think of it, croquet sounds like an amalgam of hocquet and crosse, doesn't it? Or perhaps it is from crook/crooked? Weird how all these games and names interwine.
Gary
Gary
tarheelhockey
Offside Review Specialist
croquet (n.)
1858, from Northern French dialect croquet "hockey stick," from Old North French "shepherd's crook," from Old French croc (12c.), from Old Norse krokr "hook" (see crook). Game originated in Brittany, popularized in Ireland c.1830, England c.1850, where it was very popular until 1872.
http://etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=croquet&searchmode=none
Wends its way back to France again... Crook and hook probably have the same root in Proto-Indo-European although the "cr" seems grafted on somehow to hook, maybe that works as a shift in linguistics though.
Gary
tarheelhockey
Offside Review Specialist
The same site (which, BTW, is one of my favorite internet time-wasters) has the origins of "hook" as thus:
and the origins of "crook":
They appear to be from a common PIE ancestor, with the general sense of "hook" coming through a Germanic branch of the tree and morphing from kr- to ha- sometime around the middle ages. The modern word "crook" being the older vestige of the original PIE root.
Yes, surely they must go back to a common ancestor. The "k" in the PIE word keg does connect in a way to that germanic "kr". Very interesting.
I am more than half-way through the book and am greatly impressed by the quality of the writing and research. I did peek ahead as well and read the chapter on the origin on the word hockey. So far my views have not changed, i.e., I find the authors' findings and analysis of ice hockey being played in England before Canada (as documented to date) very convincing but I don't agree that the term for the sport may derive from a bung used to close a barrel that held hock beer or wine. On the first point, the 1797 illustration of hockey played on the Thames seems to predate any discussion of hockey in the new world. Even the fairly vague Windsor, N.S. claim at the earliest would be from 1805-1810 (the Haliburton book on the famous Sam Slick character). If the game was played at Long Pond at Haliburton's school one can presume it was played earlier in Nova Scotia but that is interpretation and speculation, and one can just as easily speculate that ice hockey goes back early in England too at least to the time Dutch skates were first made available in the early 1700's. If I read the authors right, the first appearance - modern appearance - of the term hockey was in the 1770's in a book discussing the field game, but one can presume that ice versions were known to hockey players as well because the two go together so often as the later history shows too e.g. the Montreal rules published in The Gazette newspaper in that city after the 1875 game were largely taken from English field hockey rules.
But once again, hock ale (or wine) in my view can have nothing to do with hockey the game or sport. First, the 1527 Galway reference to a hockie stick provide a key earlier usage of the term hockey in connection with the game, and must mean the same thing as 1800's references to a hockey stick. The long gap between the appearances in my view is due to the term bandy - and other terms - becoming popular for whatever reason in parts of England, and also just to happenstance or the vagaries of reportage and social history. But I have no doubt hockey as a term for the game was always in use too, e.g. in West Sussex as reported by Holloway in the 1880's, and probably by the people who came on the Mayflower, hence the appearance of "hawky stick" in the Caleb books in the middle-1800's in New England.
The term seems to have been used, the rustic Sussex example apart, by aristocrats' schools and the upper classes and royalty, possibly they liked the old French-sounding term, possibly it survived from "hocquet" in Norman French or Anglo-French as part of the vocabulary of the upper classes. Sometimes, a different term is used to mean the same thing by different classes, e.g. in England this occurred for the lavatory vs. toilet and for a pudding/sweet, or dinner vs. supper. Maybe bandy was more the middle-class term. Anyway to me there is a direct link between hockie stick as used in Norman-influenced Galway in the early 1500's and as used in the 1700's and after in England, same term, same etymology history. It is true a "hockey" was often referred to as the propellant but so was the stick, numerous 1800's references, including ones I've mentioned in the American "Caleb" boys' books, refer to a "hockey" (different spellings) as the stick itself. The theory that "hockie stick" in 1527 meant simply a crooked stick and it is coincidental that the same term phonetically was later used deriving from a different source just seems to me to stretch it too far. "Hocquet" as an origin seems far more likely or even the Anglo-Saxon "hoc" if you want, but I don't see the connection to ale or wine. Just a point about beer history, and the authors cite many early authorities on beer, each one, including the Ned Ward pamphlet ones, I have seen before in books on beer history. Hock ale was, it is true, described once or twice in brewing manuals as white porter but this was simply a metaphor used by the writers and not a very good one. They were saying, since porter is well-hopped and stored for a time, pale hock beer can be viewed as a white porter because it is well-hopped and stored for a time. But the key distinguishing characteristic of porter was it was a black or dark brown beer. Ale - any kind - was much paler, and any beer - beer as technically viewed then was more hopped than ale - that wasn't dark brown or black could never be a porter because it didn't have the characteristic burned malt taste. Hock was a pale beer, i.e., a pale well-hopped malt liquor. Calling it a porter as a couple of early writers did was a loose way to say it was a beer that was quite bitter and kept for a time, you can't read more into it than that. True, hock for a time had quite a run (mostly in the south) - one early authority puts it exactly that way in fact - hence the hock cellars as called to this day at Fuller brewery in London, but the fashion died out and by the 1800's you almost never read of hock ale or beer. Even the 1700's references to it, mostly recipes by brewing writers, are relatively sparse. The authors speculate that a 1700's source may at some point emerge to call a bung from a hock beer or wine barrel a "hockey" and if so I'll change my mind but I doubt this will occur. Kudos to the authors for an ingenious theory but it's not one I can accept, or as yet.
The book itself in toto is clearly a tour de force and deserves a wide audience.
Gary
But once again, hock ale (or wine) in my view can have nothing to do with hockey the game or sport. First, the 1527 Galway reference to a hockie stick provide a key earlier usage of the term hockey in connection with the game, and must mean the same thing as 1800's references to a hockey stick. The long gap between the appearances in my view is due to the term bandy - and other terms - becoming popular for whatever reason in parts of England, and also just to happenstance or the vagaries of reportage and social history. But I have no doubt hockey as a term for the game was always in use too, e.g. in West Sussex as reported by Holloway in the 1880's, and probably by the people who came on the Mayflower, hence the appearance of "hawky stick" in the Caleb books in the middle-1800's in New England.
The term seems to have been used, the rustic Sussex example apart, by aristocrats' schools and the upper classes and royalty, possibly they liked the old French-sounding term, possibly it survived from "hocquet" in Norman French or Anglo-French as part of the vocabulary of the upper classes. Sometimes, a different term is used to mean the same thing by different classes, e.g. in England this occurred for the lavatory vs. toilet and for a pudding/sweet, or dinner vs. supper. Maybe bandy was more the middle-class term. Anyway to me there is a direct link between hockie stick as used in Norman-influenced Galway in the early 1500's and as used in the 1700's and after in England, same term, same etymology history. It is true a "hockey" was often referred to as the propellant but so was the stick, numerous 1800's references, including ones I've mentioned in the American "Caleb" boys' books, refer to a "hockey" (different spellings) as the stick itself. The theory that "hockie stick" in 1527 meant simply a crooked stick and it is coincidental that the same term phonetically was later used deriving from a different source just seems to me to stretch it too far. "Hocquet" as an origin seems far more likely or even the Anglo-Saxon "hoc" if you want, but I don't see the connection to ale or wine. Just a point about beer history, and the authors cite many early authorities on beer, each one, including the Ned Ward pamphlet ones, I have seen before in books on beer history. Hock ale was, it is true, described once or twice in brewing manuals as white porter but this was simply a metaphor used by the writers and not a very good one. They were saying, since porter is well-hopped and stored for a time, pale hock beer can be viewed as a white porter because it is well-hopped and stored for a time. But the key distinguishing characteristic of porter was it was a black or dark brown beer. Ale - any kind - was much paler, and any beer - beer as technically viewed then was more hopped than ale - that wasn't dark brown or black could never be a porter because it didn't have the characteristic burned malt taste. Hock was a pale beer, i.e., a pale well-hopped malt liquor. Calling it a porter as a couple of early writers did was a loose way to say it was a beer that was quite bitter and kept for a time, you can't read more into it than that. True, hock for a time had quite a run (mostly in the south) - one early authority puts it exactly that way in fact - hence the hock cellars as called to this day at Fuller brewery in London, but the fashion died out and by the 1800's you almost never read of hock ale or beer. Even the 1700's references to it, mostly recipes by brewing writers, are relatively sparse. The authors speculate that a 1700's source may at some point emerge to call a bung from a hock beer or wine barrel a "hockey" and if so I'll change my mind but I doubt this will occur. Kudos to the authors for an ingenious theory but it's not one I can accept, or as yet.
The book itself in toto is clearly a tour de force and deserves a wide audience.
Gary
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VanIslander
A 19-year ATDer on HfBoards
Egypt, Finland, England, Canada.
There are so many claims.
(This Gary guy certainly owns this thread.)
There are so many claims.
(This Gary guy certainly owns this thread.)
Well, thanks, but it's a fascinating topic that has been greatly illuminated by numerous posters and foremost by the authors of this new book. I'll post final thoughts once I'm finished, this is a "half-time" opinion although I think I've seen the nub of the authors' theories. (Still, further comments may come).
I want to say too that the authors make a very good point that developments in England in the 1800's often had a way of crossing the Atlantic quickly. Something reported on in London might be picked up in Toronto, say, within a month - pretty fast for that time. And so, certainly it is possible that the term hawky-stick as used in the Caleb books was an instance of an English current usage crossing over to New England. It didn't have to come with the Mayflower, in other words. Still, I incline that it did, in part because of the spelling "hawky".
Another firm opinion resulting from what I have read: the authors' arguments that bandy and hockey (along with other terms) were used interchangeably, with regional or other reasons dictating the one or the other, seems unanswerable. They document very well why the rules of each later diverged.
One other thing that caught my attention: the authors note that in the 1800's, English hockey games featured the players often wearing ribbons of different colours on their arms to distinguish the two sides. Well, think of how for a very long time, hockey sweaters have featured a band over the elbow in a different colour. That is probably a vestige of the old practice of using these ribbons.
Gary
I want to say too that the authors make a very good point that developments in England in the 1800's often had a way of crossing the Atlantic quickly. Something reported on in London might be picked up in Toronto, say, within a month - pretty fast for that time. And so, certainly it is possible that the term hawky-stick as used in the Caleb books was an instance of an English current usage crossing over to New England. It didn't have to come with the Mayflower, in other words. Still, I incline that it did, in part because of the spelling "hawky".
Another firm opinion resulting from what I have read: the authors' arguments that bandy and hockey (along with other terms) were used interchangeably, with regional or other reasons dictating the one or the other, seems unanswerable. They document very well why the rules of each later diverged.
One other thing that caught my attention: the authors note that in the 1800's, English hockey games featured the players often wearing ribbons of different colours on their arms to distinguish the two sides. Well, think of how for a very long time, hockey sweaters have featured a band over the elbow in a different colour. That is probably a vestige of the old practice of using these ribbons.
Gary
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http://books.google.ca/books?id=RKm...0CFIQ6AEwCTiWAQ#v=onepage&q=tremrealz&f=false
I finished the book, taking time to reread certain parts. Opinions unchanged from my last remarks.
I was looking online to find again "hocquet/hoquet" in a Norman French dictionary and by chance saw the link above, which may be of some interest. As one sees, there is a whole series of words connected to the verb "hocher" which means to shake or stir or jostle. This seems a separate line from the "hoc" (hook) related words. (The now-familiar hocquet is in this old French dictionary too, meaning shepherd's crook, but that is and remains part of the hoc (hook) lineage of words).
One may note that under the first definition of Hochet in the top-left hand of page 482, an old quotation (1300's) indicates that a French game had this name, and phonetically it can sound like "hockey". Again, the old French word is hochet, hochez in the oldest spelling. But it is not a stick and ball game. Today, hochet means a rattle, as in a baby's rattle. The quotation mentioned indicates that in the Liege area of the Wallon, a series of games was prohibited including "deiz" (clearly dice), and some others of odd appellation including "hochez". Hochet/hochez is defined for this old purpose as "osselet", which means the game of jacks. However, when you read it all together, I think hochez meant a game where you throw what may be dice or beans hard on the table, there is an old New Orleans game like that - the French connection again - called rattle and snap. But even craps conveys the idea. The quotation says, all these are games of chance. That odd word, tremrealz, means games of chance. Jacks does involve a ball but not all dice and similar games do. Maybe some versions of hochet/hochez included a ball, as jacks does, and some did not. The idea to shake the jacks or dice would be behind the name, not the idea of something crooked.
But anyway, there was (clearly) an old French game which you could pronounce like the word hockey and spelled quite similarly, not hocquet, but a gambling game, hochet/hochez. Nothing would seem to connect this to the idea of English hockey except possibly in the sense that everyone knows a mix-up for the puck can make a heck of a clatter. Could the sound of the clashing sticks - bear in mind the old games often had many more players than today's hockey - have inspired the name hockey, by association with the noisy game of hochet/hochez? However, the shepherd's staff theory seems stronger to me for the plain jane reason that a shepherd's staff just looks like a hockey stick and a choule-crosse stick, especially the early ones. It seems still the most logical theory to explain how the stick and ball game of hockey got its name although I acknowledge that old French isn't required for this in light of the common PIE root for the words hook and hooky.
Hochet/hochez would have been pronounced "hoshay" but it is easy to see that if it did influence the English term hockey, the foreigners would have partly altered the pronunciation and give the "c" a hard sound, this happens all the time. Incidentally, the hocher-related words, related to shaking or stirring, explain the words "hochepot" and "hotchpot", respectively the French and English versions of a mixed meat stew. The boiling and agitation of the ingredients is the shaking and stirring.
Gary
I finished the book, taking time to reread certain parts. Opinions unchanged from my last remarks.
I was looking online to find again "hocquet/hoquet" in a Norman French dictionary and by chance saw the link above, which may be of some interest. As one sees, there is a whole series of words connected to the verb "hocher" which means to shake or stir or jostle. This seems a separate line from the "hoc" (hook) related words. (The now-familiar hocquet is in this old French dictionary too, meaning shepherd's crook, but that is and remains part of the hoc (hook) lineage of words).
One may note that under the first definition of Hochet in the top-left hand of page 482, an old quotation (1300's) indicates that a French game had this name, and phonetically it can sound like "hockey". Again, the old French word is hochet, hochez in the oldest spelling. But it is not a stick and ball game. Today, hochet means a rattle, as in a baby's rattle. The quotation mentioned indicates that in the Liege area of the Wallon, a series of games was prohibited including "deiz" (clearly dice), and some others of odd appellation including "hochez". Hochet/hochez is defined for this old purpose as "osselet", which means the game of jacks. However, when you read it all together, I think hochez meant a game where you throw what may be dice or beans hard on the table, there is an old New Orleans game like that - the French connection again - called rattle and snap. But even craps conveys the idea. The quotation says, all these are games of chance. That odd word, tremrealz, means games of chance. Jacks does involve a ball but not all dice and similar games do. Maybe some versions of hochet/hochez included a ball, as jacks does, and some did not. The idea to shake the jacks or dice would be behind the name, not the idea of something crooked.
But anyway, there was (clearly) an old French game which you could pronounce like the word hockey and spelled quite similarly, not hocquet, but a gambling game, hochet/hochez. Nothing would seem to connect this to the idea of English hockey except possibly in the sense that everyone knows a mix-up for the puck can make a heck of a clatter. Could the sound of the clashing sticks - bear in mind the old games often had many more players than today's hockey - have inspired the name hockey, by association with the noisy game of hochet/hochez? However, the shepherd's staff theory seems stronger to me for the plain jane reason that a shepherd's staff just looks like a hockey stick and a choule-crosse stick, especially the early ones. It seems still the most logical theory to explain how the stick and ball game of hockey got its name although I acknowledge that old French isn't required for this in light of the common PIE root for the words hook and hooky.
Hochet/hochez would have been pronounced "hoshay" but it is easy to see that if it did influence the English term hockey, the foreigners would have partly altered the pronunciation and give the "c" a hard sound, this happens all the time. Incidentally, the hocher-related words, related to shaking or stirring, explain the words "hochepot" and "hotchpot", respectively the French and English versions of a mixed meat stew. The boiling and agitation of the ingredients is the shaking and stirring.
Gary
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One more thought resulting from the reference discussed above (Dictionnaire De L'Ancienne Langue Francaise Et De Tous Ses Dialectes Du IX ieme Au XV ieme Siecle, by Frederic Godefroy (1885)).
One of the meanings of "hoquet" is that of a legal dispute or contest, a "chicane", and the Dictionnaire indicates that in old French, the term became one used generally to mean any "difficulte", not just a legal one. See at pp. 495-496. In colloquial English you might call it a dust-up, a mix-up, a keen contest. Gee, sounds like a lot of hockey games.
This meaning of hoquet in my view relates clearly to hocher and the idea of shaking, agitation, jostling, even though the same word in its meaning of shepherd's crook derives from the PIE hoc root. (Words get all twisted and torn in linguistic evolution). Shaking dice, beans, pebbles, or something of this nature with a bouncing ball became jacks (osselet), hochez in old French. Hochet in current French is a rattle - again the shaking up part is continuous. A jostle of men with sticks is a kind of chicane, isn't it, the omnipresent theme of violence and fighting in old stick and ball games, discussed by most early observers English or French, might have suggested the name for the game. The clatter of the dice or the knocking of the sticks and shins in a field game, or both, might have suggested a hochez/hoquet. And a "hockie stick" (1527) would therefore have been a stick used to fight such a contest. The early games, French and English, often involved a great number more than the sides of today, if you had 50-100 men running around in close proximity wielding short cane-like sticks over their heads as some old pictures show, the mayhem - a vestige of which survives in hockey today and due to this reading I can see why more than ever - may have inspired the name of the game. It's a conjecture, nothing more, and would require that one view the hoquet word in the sense of a crooked stick as a coincidence. It probably wasn't, but stranger things have happened,
Gary
One of the meanings of "hoquet" is that of a legal dispute or contest, a "chicane", and the Dictionnaire indicates that in old French, the term became one used generally to mean any "difficulte", not just a legal one. See at pp. 495-496. In colloquial English you might call it a dust-up, a mix-up, a keen contest. Gee, sounds like a lot of hockey games.
This meaning of hoquet in my view relates clearly to hocher and the idea of shaking, agitation, jostling, even though the same word in its meaning of shepherd's crook derives from the PIE hoc root. (Words get all twisted and torn in linguistic evolution). Shaking dice, beans, pebbles, or something of this nature with a bouncing ball became jacks (osselet), hochez in old French. Hochet in current French is a rattle - again the shaking up part is continuous. A jostle of men with sticks is a kind of chicane, isn't it, the omnipresent theme of violence and fighting in old stick and ball games, discussed by most early observers English or French, might have suggested the name for the game. The clatter of the dice or the knocking of the sticks and shins in a field game, or both, might have suggested a hochez/hoquet. And a "hockie stick" (1527) would therefore have been a stick used to fight such a contest. The early games, French and English, often involved a great number more than the sides of today, if you had 50-100 men running around in close proximity wielding short cane-like sticks over their heads as some old pictures show, the mayhem - a vestige of which survives in hockey today and due to this reading I can see why more than ever - may have inspired the name of the game. It's a conjecture, nothing more, and would require that one view the hoquet word in the sense of a crooked stick as a coincidence. It probably wasn't, but stranger things have happened,Gary
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Killion
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- Feb 19, 2010
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Interesting. So, I assume you enjoyed the book Gary? Ive' yet to read it but look forward to doing so.... also, have you looked into the etymology of the word Puck? Some interesting clues there as well. Possibly from the Norse word puki; Puck as well a mischievous or Devilish Sprite from Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Nights Dream. Quite appropriate really as the Puck does seem to have a mind of its own at various times. Irish origins as well.
Oh yes, some remarks of mine earlier in the thread:
"I ... am greatly impressed by the quality of the writing and research".
"The book itself in toto is clearly a tour de force and deserves a wide audience".
On the point about puck, I didn't look at the etymology except that I don't think Gaelic is involved because "buck" clearly is a cognate of puck, so it means to push or hit the ball or bung further. I did find an 1800's reference to a Princeton hockey game where the players were said to be "bucking" the ball, so the noun puck must I believe come from the verb puck. Possibly the Irish accent changed buck to puck, maybe that explains an Irish connection? Interesting about Shakespeare, possibly there is some connection to his creation Puck in the play mentioned.
Gary
Killion
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.... perhaps inspired as a lad?... Young Will playing on the frozen river Avon before moving on to Junior with the
Stratford Kroehlers? Centering Joe The Duke of Padocah Klukay on LW, Howie Meeker over there on his RW huh?
who_me?
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The first international sporting event was a cricket match between Canada and the US in 1844. The second would be between Australia and England in 1877. This tells us that [1] cricket, not soccer was the most popular sport in the English speaking world in the 19th century; [2] cricket, not hockey/baseball, was the sport of choice in North America during this time; [3] the rest of the world did not have a developed sporting culture.
It was because of the Civil War that America moved on from cricket to baseball (because the Union troops couldn't play cricket on the war-torn battlefield), and Canada followed suit and abandoned cricket for hockey. And just as baseball has been shown to have its origins in England (c.f. Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey), it should not come as a surprise that ice hockey has its origins in England.
Attempts to attribute French origins to hockey (or tennis) based on etymology are mis-leading because half of the English aristocracy as late as the 18th century were of French (i.e. Huguenot) ancestry.
It was because of the Civil War that America moved on from cricket to baseball (because the Union troops couldn't play cricket on the war-torn battlefield), and Canada followed suit and abandoned cricket for hockey. And just as baseball has been shown to have its origins in England (c.f. Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey), it should not come as a surprise that ice hockey has its origins in England.
Attempts to attribute French origins to hockey (or tennis) based on etymology are mis-leading because half of the English aristocracy as late as the 18th century were of French (i.e. Huguenot) ancestry.
Theokritos
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- Apr 6, 2010
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Australia vs England in 1877 was the second international sporting event, is that what you're saying?
That's certainly not a logical conclusion one has to draw here.
Not in the sense we would define it probably, but that's still a statement so broad and apodictic that it's easily misleading.
Attempts to attribute French origins to hockey (or tennis) based on etymology are mis-leading because half of the English aristocracy as late as the 18th century were of French (i.e. Huguenot) ancestry.[/QUOTE]
I don't follow what you are saying here. Giden/Houda/Martel make the point in the new book, tellingly, that hockey had aristo connections in the 1700's. So doesn't the fact of long-lived French blood in the English peerage support a French origin for hockey including its etymology?
I don't follow what you are saying here. Giden/Houda/Martel make the point in the new book, tellingly, that hockey had aristo connections in the 1700's. So doesn't the fact of long-lived French blood in the English peerage support a French origin for hockey including its etymology?
Iain Fyffe
Hockey fact-checker
I think he's merely saying that the use of a French term does not necessarily imply an origin in France - it could simply be English aristocracy using a French term to describe their English game.
Uncle Rotter
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