Anyone can play hockey, which is a word for a group of different summer and winter team games that

started on a field, a sheet of ice, or a dry floor like in a gym. There are different rules, numbers of
players, clothes, and playing surfaces for these sports, but they all involve two teams competing
against each other to hit a ball or disk into a goal.

Hockey comes in many forms. Skates with wheels or blades are used in some games but not in others.
To help people tell the difference between these games, the word "hockey" is often followed by a
different word, like "field hockey," "ice hockey," "roller hockey," "rink hockey," or "floor hockey."

Each of these sports has two teams that use hockey sticks to try to move the object of the game,
which could be a ball or a disk (like a puck), into the other team's goal. With two important
exceptions, a straight stick and an open disk (still called a puck) with a hole in the middle are used
instead. The first is a type of floor hockey whose rules were written down by Sam Jacks in 1936, during
the Great Depression. In the second case, a variation was changed around the 1970s to make a similar
game that would be good for the Special Olympics, which were just starting to include team sports.
Ringette is a Canadian ice skating team sport that was created in 1963. The floor game gym ringette is
similar to floor hockey, but it is not a real variant because it was made in the 1990s and based on
ringette. Sam Jacks, a Canadian, also came up with ringette. In 1936, he wrote down the rules for the
open disk style of floor hockey.

While lacrosse, hurling, camogie, and shinty are all games that are similar to different types of hockey,
they are not usually called hockey.

How words came to be

The word "hockey" was first used in the book "Juvenile Sports and Pastimes, to Which Are Prefixed,
Memoirs of the Author: Including a New Mode of Infant Education by Richard Johnson (Pseud. Master
Michel Angelo), which came out in 1773. Chapter XI was called "New Improvements on the Game of
Hockey."We think that King Edward III of England talked about hockey in a proclamation in 1363[2].
This idea comes from modern translations of the Latin declaration, which specifically said that the
games "Pilam Manualem, Pedivam, & Bacularem: & ad Canibucam & Gallorum Pugnam" were illegal.
[3][4] When English historian and biographer John Strype translated the statement in 1720, he didn't
use the word "hockey." Instead, he translated "Canibucam" as "Cambuck." This could have been a
reference to an early form of hockey or a game more like golf or croquet.[6]

No one knows where the word "hockey" came from. One idea is that it comes from hoquet, which is a
Middle French word for a shepherd's staff.[7] The curves, or "hooked" ends of hockey sticks would
have looked a lot like these staves. The bat-and-ball games of Croquet and Cricket also have similar
folk origins. Another idea comes from the fact that cork bungs (stoppers) are sometimes used instead
of wooden balls to play the game. Beer called "hock" or "hocky" was in the kegs where the stoppers
came from.[8]

These days,

Most of Eastern and Northern Europe, the United States, Canada, and Russia use the word "hockey" to
mean ice hockey.

"Para ice hockey" is the new name for sledge hockey, also written as "sled hockey." This is the only ice
hockey game designed just for people with physical disabilities.

People in most of the world use the word "hockey" to mean "field hockey." In Canada, the US, Russia,
and most of Eastern and Northern Europe, on the other hand, the word is generally used to mean "ice
hockey."[9]
These days, the word "hockey" can mean either field hockey, an Olympic sport played with a stick and
a ball in the summer, or bandy and ice hockey, two winter team sports played on ice. The reason for
this is that stick and ball sports like field hockey and other similar games came before games like
bandy and ice hockey, which are played on ice skates, as well as games played on dry floors like roller
hockey and floor hockey. In everyday speech, however, the "hockey" that is meant often relies on
where it is played, how big it is, and how popular it is. One example is that "hockey" is more often
used to refer to field hockey in Europe than to ice hockey in Canada. "Hockey on the ice" was the
original name of bandy, which was played before ice hockey was organized and developed. The name
was changed to "bandy" in the early 1900s to avoid confusion with ice hockey, which is a separate
sport. Bandy is similar to other hockey games, but it gets some of its ideas from association football.

A type of ice hockey called "sledge hockey" was created in the 1960s for people with physical
disabilities. It has since been renamed "Para-ice hockey."

The Past

The National Archaeological Museum of Athens has a bas relief from around 600 BC.

In the past, people from many countries played games with curved sticks and a ball. In Egypt, carvings
from 4,000 years ago show teams with sticks and a projectile. Hurling has been played in Ireland since
before 1272 BC, and there is a picture of the game from around 600 BC in Ancient Greece. The game
may have been called kerētízein (κ΁ρητίοεβv) because it was played with a horn-shaped stick (kéras,
κέρας).[10] The Daur people in Inner Mongolia have played beikou, a game that is a lot like modern
field hockey, for over a thousand years.[11]
Laws that deal with sports and games show that hockey-like games were played in the Middle Ages.
Ireland's Galway Statute, which was passed in 1527, banned some types of ball games, such as those
that used "hooked" (written "hockie," which sounds like "hooky") sticks.[12]

...never to use or occupy the horling of the litill ball with hockie sticks or staves, and never to use a
hand ball to play without walls, but only a big foot ball [13].

"Bandy" is a game like golf where two people try to hit a ball (usually a knob or gnarl from a tree
trunk) in different directions. The stick used for the game is crook-shaped at the end. (1) Devon in the
middle of the 18th century.

By the 19th century, the different types and groups of historical games were starting to separate and
come together to form the individual sports we know today. Organizations whose sole purpose was to
write down rules and laws began to appear, and national and foreign bodies were quickly created to
oversee competition in both areas.

Types of

Groupy Bandy

The Swedish game Bandy

Bandy is played with a ball on an ice rink about the size of a football field, usually outside. The rules
are a lot like those in association football. People in Russia and Sweden play it for a living. The IOC
recognizes the sport, and the Federation of International Bandy is in charge of it around the world.

Bandy began in England in the 1800s and was first called "hockey on the ice"[14]. It quickly spread to
other European countries and is now known as "Russian hockey" in Russia, where it is played. World
Championships in Bandy have been held since 1957, and since 2004, they have also been held for
women. In many places, there are national club championships. Every year, the best teams in the
world compete in the Bandy World Cup.

Hockey on grass

A game of field hockey at Melbourne University

Field hockey is the main topic.

The small, hard ball is about 73 mm (2.9 in) in diameter, and the game is played on gravel, natural
grass, or sand- or water-based manmade turf. Some of the places in the world where both men and
women like to play are Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Argentina. It can be
played by mixed-sex teams, but in most countries it is played between single-sex teams.
The 126-member International Hockey Federation (FIH) is in charge. Field hockey for men has been
played at every Summer Olympics since 1908, except for those in 1912 and 1924. Field hockey for
women has been played at every Summer Olympics since 1980.

Modern field hockey sticks are made of a mix of wood, glass fiber, carbon fiber, or sometimes both.
They are shaped like a J, with a bent hook at the playing end, a flat side for playing, and a curved back.
All sticks are right-handed; you can't use a left-handed stick.

Field hockey as we know it today started in England in the middle of the 18th century, mostly in
schools. But it wasn't until the first half of the 19th century that it really took off. The very first club
was set up in 1849 in Blackheath, which is in the southeast of London. It is the national sport of
Pakistan to play field hockey.[15] India used to have a national sport, but in August 2012, the Ministry
of Youth Affairs and Sports said that India no longer has a national sport.[16]