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WHIFF-WHAFF

9/1/2019

1 Comment

 
When the game ping-pong was invented in England at the end of the nineteenth century, it was played with champagne corks and called whiff-whaff after the sounds made when they were hit by a paddle, but later on people switched to using celluloid balls, and since the sound changed the name did too, to reflect the new noise. In 1901, a British manufacturing company saw an opportunity, so they trademarked the name, and later on that was bought by the game production company Parker Brothers. There have been some myths that the name ping-pong is culturally insensitive because it makes fun of Chinese and we should use table tennis instead, but that's apocryphal. The real reason people say table tennis is because other manufacturing companies couldn't use ping pong so they marketed the generic term instead, which is pretty interesting.
1 Comment
Jonathan
3/23/2022 11:48:52 am

According to Harry Mount at the Daily Telegraph (22 Nov, 2012) the game was originally called 'Gossima', which was owned by the Jacques games company. The company then relaunched as Ping Pong. Slazenger trademarked their version of the game as Whiff Whaff, which had been used colloquially before hand. Later table tennis was adopted by everyone else as it wasn't trademarked and Jacques threatened legal action on tournaments that didn't use their equipment.

After a quick Google, it appears Jacques trademarked Ping Pong on 21 Sept, 1900, while Slazenger trademarked Whiff Whaff on 31st Dec, 1900. However, previously David Foster had patented 'table tennis' on 18 July, 1890, but his game used strung rackets. A US patent for the same game was filed on 21 Jan, 1891. Later that year, 16th July, 1891, Jacques registered Gossima in London on 16 July, 1891. For its first 9 years Gossima used a cork ball, it was only when the celluloid was introduced from America that the game was revolutionised and they rebranded as Ping Pong.

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    Hello! I'm Adam Aleksic, a senior studying government and linguistics at Harvard University, where I co-founded the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society. In addition to etymology, I also really enjoy trivia, politics, vexillology, geography, board games, conlanging, art history, and law. 
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