There are numerous examples of ball and curved stick games throughout history. Hurling dates to before 1272 BC in Ireland, and there is a depiction from roughly 600 BC in Ancient Greece, where the game may have been known as certain because it was played with a horn or horn-like stick. In Egypt, 4000-year-old carvings show teams with sticks and a projectile.[10] The Dour people of Inner Mongolia have been playing a sport resembling contemporary hockey, for about 1,000 years.[11]
Legislation pertaining to sports and games contains the majority of the evidence for hockey-like games played during the Middle Ages. A law known as the Galway Statute, passed in Ireland in 1527, outlawed a variety of ball sports, including those that used "hooked" written.
The first recorded use of the word hockey is in the 1773 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), whose chapter XI was titled "New Improvements on the Game of Hockey".[1] The belief that hockey was mentioned in a 1363 proclamation by King Edward III of England[2] is based on modern translations of the proclamation, which was originally in Latin and explicitly forbade the games "Pilaf Manual em. The English historian and biographer John Stripe did not use the word "hockey" when he translated the proclamation in 1720, instead translating "Cam buck";[5] this may have referred to either an early form of hockey or a game more similar to golf or croquet.[6]
In the 1773 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), chapter XI, New Improvements on the Game of Hockey," is where the word "hockey" is first mentioned.[1] Modern translations of a 1363 proclamation by King Edward III of England[2] that specifically prohibited the games "Pilaf Manual em". John Stripe, an English historian and biographer, translated the proclamation in 1720 but did not use the word "hockey"; instead, he translated as "Cam buck". This might have meant either an ice game or a sport.
In most of the world, the term hockey when used without clarification refers to field hockey, while in Canada, the United States, Russia and most of Eastern and Northern Europe, the term usually refers to ice hockey.[9]
In more recent history, the word "hockey" is used in reference to either the summer Olympic sport of field hockey, which is a stick and ball game, and the winter ice team skating sports of bandy and ice hockey. This is due to the fact that field hockey and other stick and ball sports and their related variants preceded games which would eventually be played on ice with ice skates, namely bandy and ice hockey, as well as sports involving dry floors such as roller hockey and floor hockey. However, the "hockey" referred to in common parlance often depends on locale, geography, and the size and popularity of the sport involved. For example, in Europe, "hockey" more typically refers to field hockey, whereas in Canada, it typically refers to ice hockey. In the case of bandy, the game was initially called "hockey on the ice" and preceded the organization and development of ice hockey, but was officially changed to "bandy" in the early 20th century in order to avoid confusion with ice hockey, a separate sport. Bandy, while related to other hockey games, derives some of its inspiration from Association football.
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