Why fa-futbol instead of fa-football, or no alias fa-football in 4.2.0?

[alaindeurveilher]

Hi, thanks for the new release 4.2.0.

I was wondering why there a fa-futbol and no fa-football in this new release? Is it a mistake ?

Thank you.

[tagliala]

I suppose that fa-football is in American culture

[alaindeurveilher]

Ha OK. I found it strange though to have a Portuguese name among the other English items. Does not (will not) make it super easy to find the icon using the search then I suppose. Maybe It would have been interesting to prefix it with 'sport' or something (fa-sport-futbol, fa-sport-soccer-ball, fa-sport-xxxx, ...). Thanks anyway. I close the ticket then.

[tagliala]

you're welcome. futbol is odd for me too :)

[alaindeurveilher]

should i leave this ticked closed then?

[GermanKiwi]

Yeah I noticed the same thing and found it odd - a non-English name, where all the other names are English. I'd prefer "fa-football" myself. Otherwise it's confusing when trying to search for it. I know that the name "football" can mean other sports in a few other countries (eg. in New Zealand, football refers to rugby, and in the USA it's obviously their name for gridiron). However in the vast majority of countries, football refers to soccer, and personally I think that's the meaning that everyone would understand, even those who are from countries where it has a different meaning (eg. in NZ it means rugby but we still know that everywhere else it means soccer, so there's no confusion for us).

If not fa-football, then maybe fa-soccer or fa-soccerball? But my vote would be for fa-football, and make fa-futbol an alias. If you ever decide to make an icon for a gridiron ball or rugby ball, you can call those fa-gridiron and fa-rugbyball or whatever. :)

Maybe @AlainD- should reopen this until @davegandy can give his definitive answer? ;)

[tagliala]

I can reopen until a clarification from Dave.

Since football is "reserved", I'm for dropping futbol (in 5.0.0) and leave soccer only.

PS: I'm an average Italian (it means that I must like football) and I had to google for futbol when I read of it in the sources

[GermanKiwi]

Haha, yes as an Italian you have no choice about loving football! ;)

What do you mean about "football" being reserved?

Incidentally, another question I have is why this icon needs the -o suffix - it's not really an outline, it's a regular image of a football/soccer ball - that's how they look - white with black hexagons. I'd prefer to drop the -o for the sake of keeping the name a bit shorter and more obvious. :)

[alaindeurveilher]

The problem with this icon, if it will be modified, is that it will introduce a break down for the users who already use it, if they update to a newer version which does not include the fa-futbol anymore. or uses -o which disappears in the new version of fontawesome! Unless there a quick 4.2.1 very soon with just this fix if Dave agrees soon.

[tagliala]

@AlainD- IMHO it is too late for a fix, we should wait 5.0.0 because this is a breaking change

@GermanKiwi I mean that football could be reserved for American football

[davegandy]

Yep, football is sadly going to be reserved for American football. Just didn’t want to call it fa-american-football. Tried to get the best of both worlds and go with the more international spelling of futbol.

And I was working on a solid version of this icon and this one looked outlined to me. I could see dropping the -o on the end. Maybe another alias for now before v5.0 (the next big release I’ll be doing).

[alaindeurveilher]

Wow. It's the first time I hear that futbol is the more international spelling of football :-) I don't know on what references you arrived to such a conclusion, but I doubt that's right. I think that there is more countries in the world associating football with the round ball game than the American football game. Even in Brasil, everyone knows that football is futbol. And apart from the USA, every country refering to the game played in there uses the term American football, not to confuse people. Even in the USA itself, I'm pretty sure, that they know the difference between football and American football (it sounds a bit weird to them though to repeat American, but they understand)

Still I don't think that it was a smart choice of reserving football for the American football: 1 country against all the other ones. Specially by choosing a non-English word :-)

Suggestion: And why not use then fa-football for the American football, and fa-football-soccer for the other one we all know (fa-futbol would become an alias then, to keep the retrocompatibility)?

[balexandre]

Suggestion: And why not use then fa-football for the American football, and fa-football-soccer for the other one we all know (fa-futbol would become an alias then, to keep the retro compatibility)?

:+1:

[GermanKiwi]

Yes I agree with @AlainD- that "futbol" is not the international spelling for football. It's specifically a Portuguese word that is only used in Portuguese-speaking countries. In fact I had never heard this word before in my life, until I saw it on a sign while watching this year's FIFA world cup - and then I had to look it up on Google Translate. :) It's not used here in Europe or anywhere else outside of Brazil and other Portuguese nations.

Why does "football" have to be reserved for American football though? If the USA is the only country that uses this word to refer to American football, and the word is almost universally used to refer to soccer everywhere else, then surely it would make more sense to use football to refer to the soccer ball icon

I would propose using fa-gridiron for American football - that's an accurate name that removes any ambiguity over which sport it refers to. Everyone knows what gridiron is.

Then use fa-football for the soccer ball (and fa-futbol can be an alias).

However, if you absolutely must use fa-football for the American football, then personally I would not prefer fa-football-soccer for the soccer ball - it's too long, and it's redundant (football = soccer, so we don't need both terms in the same name). I'd prefer fa-soccer instead.

[tagliala]

@GermanKiwi

I'd prefer fa-soccer instead.

+1

:soccer: <-- :soccer: :football: <-- :football:

[GermanKiwi]

Really? So you'd prefer that, even though football is only used that way in one country? :) Instead of this?...

:soccer: <-- football :football: <-- gridiron

This is my 1st preference, anyway.

(Gosh, we're a passionate bunch with our sports, huh! ;))

[alaindeurveilher]

+1 for: :soccer: <-- football :football: <-- gridiron with an alias rugby

(or at least soccerball if is refused after all we said, for the purpose of the search.)

[tagliala]

I suppose nobody complained here:

https://github.com/github/gemoji/blob/master/db/emoji.json#L4543

and here:

https://github.com/github/gemoji/blob/master/db/emoji.json#L4523

PS: just found out :rugby_football: which is different from :football:

[GermanKiwi]

Haha, yeah a rugby ball is a different shape and size to a gridiron ball - not the same thing! :)

I've never heard of gemoji before (only regular emoji like on your smartphone). Maybe nobody noticed the gemoji names there? Or maybe its creator is also American - the names given there for both sports are the American names, not the international names. :) No idea.

I guess FA is free to use its own naming conventions though, right? As determined by Dave of course. :)

[cvkef]

According to wikipedia:

Football refers to a number of sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball with the foot to score a goal. The most popular of these sports worldwide is association football, more commonly known as just "football" or "soccer". Unqualified, the word football applies to whichever form of football is the most popular in the regional context in which the word appears, including association football, as well as American football, Australian rules football, Canadian football, Gaelic football, rugby league, rugby union, and other related games. These variations of football are known as football codes.

That said I think more proper icon names should be:

1. fa-football for :soccer:, with alias fa-soccer (and maybe fa-association-football, not very common)
2. fa-american-football for :football:, (maybe with alias fa-gridiron, not very common i think)

Rugby differs to American Football in many parameters.

[kevbodavidson]

+1

[davegandy]

This is a great question, and I've been thinking a lot about this. Whatever we do, we'll need to be consistent. It gets really tough to name these if we're constantly changing the rules for how we pick the name. I was trying to be more internationally conscious with the naming here, but in the end I think it's backfired. It's just too hard to keep moving the target for how we pick the names.

In the future, we'll sadly need to name these from a single country perspective. Since we understand more of the cultural context for the US, we'll have to go from that point of view. So when we can get around to it, fa-futbol will be renamed fa-soccer. With 5.0.5, we've already added an fa-football-ball.

Not my favorite solution, but it's the most guessable and predictable for users I think. Also, we can start beefing up the search terms to include more languages. Hopefully that's the best of all worlds.