"The word originally referred to a variety of games in medieval Europe, which were played on foot. These sports were usually played by peasants, as opposed to the horse-riding sports more often enjoyed by aristocrats. In some cases, the word has been applied to games which involved carrying a ball and specifically banned kicking."
"The word "soccer" originated as an Oxford "-er" slang abbreviation of "association", and is credited to late nineteenth century English footballer, Charles Wreford-Brown. It has been speculated that both this story and the William Webb Ellis rugby story are apocryphal, however this appears to be a revision of history as the English term "soccer" fell out of favour while England differentiated their language from America's (where the term soccer had become widely used) English in the 20th century due to growing American popularity. "Socker" with a k appeared in print at least as early as 1889. The New York Times, published in 1905: "It was a fad at Oxford and Cambridge to use 'er' at the end of many words, such as foot-er, sport-er, and as Association did not take an 'er' easily, it was, and is, sometimes spoken of as Soccer." There is also the sometimes-heard variation, "soccer football"." - from Wikipedia
Also, American football was originally known as "gridiron football" because the playing field was known as the "gridiron" but the descriptor fell out of favor because it was cumbersome.