Apparently the game pictured below is known as babyfoot in French. Which is kind of cute.
According to the Belgian magazine, Le Soir illustré, the French inventor Lucien Rosengart (1881–1976) came up with the game of table football in the 1930s when he was looking for things to keep his grandchildren entertained during the cold winter months. He called the game “baby foot”.
The name babyfoot, which is also written baby-foot is used in France, Canada and Switzerland. It is also known as football sur table or football de table in Canada, as kicker in Belgium, foot-foot in Switzerland, and football de table in France.
I would call it table football, which is the usual name for this game in the UK, and was patented by Harold Searles Thornton in 1921.
It was brought to the the USA in the 1950s by Lawrence Patterson, and it is called foosball [ˈfuːzbɔːl], which comes from the German name tischfußball (table football).
In German it is known as Tischfußball (table football), Tischkicker (table kicker) or Kicker.
What do you call it?
Do you know any interesting names for this game in other languages?
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_football
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby-foot
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/TischfußFball
Foosball, but with an /s/ rather than /z/ sound. I\’m in the US and didn\’t know about any of the other names.
In Spanish there are several names, above all, “fútbol de mesa” or “futbolín”.
In italy alongside calcio da tavolo it was also called calcioballila during the fascist dictature – and by the elders until the 60s of late century when i was a boy (it refers to Opera Nazionale Balilla, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Nazionale_Balilla?wprov=sfla1)
Seems like table football has many “fathers”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_football
In Brazil this is known as Totó, Pebolim or Pacal, depending on the region.