Tenniser - a summer research project

By guest explorer: Fred Shivvin

It's summer. Holidays at the beach: hassled driving, then relaxed dining, drinking, reading, sleeping, swimming, watching the cricket and playing it on the beach. (Or, for some, fighting bush fires).

The holiday beach game. Source

When you do any of these you become: a (hassled) driver, diner, drinker, reader, sleeper, swimmer, watcher (or viewer), player and cricketer. ''I'll be the bowler first. You go fielder, Fred.' (Or, for some, a fire-fighter).

I'm also watching and playing that other summer sport - tennis. And it occurs to me: why is there no word tenniser?

Rules in English almost always have exceptions. But the word tenniser doesn't break any English rules or conventions, so why don't we use it?

Over my summer holiday, I decided to find out why.

Add -er to make an action into an agent noun

The English process to change a word from an action, like drink, to a person who does that action is to add -er to the base word to make a noun, as in drink-er. In linguistics, this created word is called an 'agent noun'.  Things can also be 'agent nouns', e.g. you toast (verb) your bread in a toast-er (agent noun). Thus the -er is called an 'agent noun suffix'.

Not that sort of agent noun! Source

Words with the agent nouns suffix -er are extremely common, think computer, plumber, writer, banker. Exceptions are also common, like actor, gangster, artist, athlete and others. Then there are variations according to country: adviser in England, advisor in the US.  

-er is the most common agent noun suffix because it comes from -ere which has the same Germanic origin as English. It's the default.

As for the other agent noun suffixes, -or is the Latin equivalent to the Germanic/English suffix -er and is used in words with Latin origins (like actor, sculptor, improvisor). Sometimes it is -tor with the less common feminine form -trix (aviator, aviatrix). Numerous Latin and French (with its Latin origin) words were fully integrated into English between 1066 and the mid-1550s when Latin and French were spoken by royalty, in governance and in scholarship. So, the -or, -tor ending is fairly common in English.

-ster is way less common. It was originally -istre, the feminine counterpart to the masculine form of -ere. So we had spinster for single woman, brewster for brewer of spirits (a woman's job); chidester, an angry woman prone to chiding. Over time, both -ere and -istre lost their gender designation, -ere became -er and -istre became -ster. Now the -ster suffix is most often seen in agent nouns for new concepts (e.g. gamester, gangster, punster, pollster).

To start my tenniser quest, I sorted a list of sports from Wikipedia into those ending in -er and those in something else. I left out 'sports' like quidditch and cardboard tube fighting, anything that I didn't know about, and those I just couldn't really think of as sports, like fishing, scrabble or goat tying.

Sports sorted according to agent nouns suffix. Or not.

So, heaps with -er for the agent noun suffix, a handful each with -ist or something else. And then a group that require player (or thrower).

Always interesting at Etymology Online

Next stop was Etymology Online to find out why some words use a suffix other than -er.

Parachuter? Source

The suffix -ist means 'one who does or makes', used to indicate adherence to a doctrine or custom, from French -iste and Latin -ista. So, we get words like anarchist, theist, apiarist, barista (doctrines or customs of practice). Is there a 'doctrine' for trampolinists, parachutists, cyclists, tobogganists or canoeists? My hunch is these are recent sports relative to the history of English, and so the words from the original Latin-based languages did not integrate into English. 

Of the column I headed 'other', two seem to have missing suffixes altogether: gymnast and athlete. These are formed by dropping the ending -ics from gymnastics and athletics - both Greek origin words. I guess adding an English/Germanic agent noun suffix to a Greek word would just sound too silly: who would want to say they were a gynmasticer. Similar story with mountaineering and orienteering: shortened by dropping the -ing.  You could really get lost trying to say orienteeringer.

Taekwondo-ins taekwondo-ing. Source

Like the -ist ending words, the various Asian martial arts that have been adopted only recently (again, in relation to the history of English) remain immune to English language conventions. Formally, they use an agent noun suffix from their language of origin: -ka from Japanese (karateka, judoka); -jia from Chinese (kung fujia); and -in from Korean (taekwondoin). More commonly, English speakers tend to add the word practitioner (or similar) or use a description, like 'I'm a second dan in taekwondo'. 

Parkour is also a recently created sport. The name derives from parcours du combattant (obstacle course), a French military training method from the early 1900s. When it was adopted by English speakers, the word parcours was deliberately changed to replace the 'c' with 'k' and remove the silent 's' to make the word stronger and more dynamic, suitable for its practitioners. Someone who does parkour is called by the French word traceur/traceuse (from tracer meaning 'to trace a path' and informally also 'to hurry up').

Which leaves the final column of words which seem immune to all agent noun suffixes and require the word 'player' or similar. 

Why won't some words play with -er?

The most common reason sports do not follow the English language convention is their name has been lifted directly and fairly recently from their original language. Thus, we have from billiards, directly from French meaning 'wooden cue stick';  bocce, from Italian meaning '(wooden) balls'; discus taken directly from Latin meaning 'disk'; lacrosse, from Canadian French jeu de la crosse, meaning 'game of the hooked sticks'; and javelin - from French javeline, meaning 'a little spear'.  (Although Wikipedia lists luger and kayaker, from words that are also direct lifts from non-English languages, Etymology Online doesn't recognise them as words. Maybe they are in transition.) This also happens to English words, as in the recent and direct lift of words from English into French, e.g. le weekend or Spanish, e.g. el taxi. 

A second group are those words ending in vowels sounds: frisbee, hockey, polo, vigoro. Adding -er would make them clumsy to say in English.

A third group are those words that already end in -er: rounders, snooker, soccer. They use the suffix -er to create informal or joke version of a word (think rugger from rugby, fresher from freshman, etc). Rounders is named after the game's central aim of running round the bases, an informal name for an informal version of baseball/softball. The game of snooker was created in India as an informal billiards, with the name being a British military slang word for a newly joined cadet, a snooker, perhaps based on the word snook which meant a derisive gesture. The joke name thus derided new recruits and new players.

Socca players. Source

Soccer fits here too. The word started life in 1889 as socca, soon becoming soccer. The word was slang created by Rugby playing students to mock those students who played the newly popular game called football. Socca is from the word association in the title 'Football Assoc' as in the FA Cup (fortunately abbreviated to soc and not ass). So those who played 'rugger' mocked those who played 'soccer'. Now you know why soccer is called football everywhere except English speaking countries!

A fourth reason for the absence of the -er agent noun suffix is because the resulting word could or already does mean something: curler, darter, squasher, pooler.

The final reason relates to those that are place or proprietary names. Badminton is named after Badminton House, the estate of the Duke of Beaufort, where the game first was played in England, adapted from an Indian game poona. Frisbee is a trademark registered in 1959 by Wham-O Company; the prototype was modeled on pie tins from the Frisbie Bakery of Bridgeport, USA. Ping-pong was trademarked in 1900 by Parker Brothers in the US, with the name based on imitating the sound of the ball hitting a hard surface.

That still leaves me with tennis (and table tennis). It doesn't fit any of the five identified reasons that words resist an agent noun suffix. The word tenniser sounds all right. The word tennis comes from French, but it is a very old game so the French word should have been fully integrated into English well before the end of the 1500s. 

I wondered if there was something else in the history of the game.

Tennis, the game of kings and politics

Most historians believe that tennis originated in the monastic cloisters in France in the 12th century. The game was played by striking a ball with the hand, and became known as le jeu de paume, meaning 'the game of the palm'. This version sounds like what we now call handball.

Jeu de paume. Source

The game soon became popular in both England and France. Royal interest in England began with Henry V (1413–22) who had a reputation as an idler before becoming the king, due to his preoccupation with games including this early version of tennis. Henry VIII (1509–47) was a big fan of the game, playing at Hampton Court on a court he built in 1530.  Francis I of France (1515–47) was an enthusiastic player and promoter, building courts and encouraging play among the courtiers and commoners. His successor Henry II (1547–59) was also an excellent player and continued the royal French tradition. The game was played inside and sometimes referred to as 'the game of kings'. 

During the early 1500s, rackets came into use and the game began to be called tennis from the word Anglo-French word tenez, a command meaning 'hold! receive! take!' which was called by the server prior to hitting the ball.

This period of the growing status of tennis coincides with over a century of conflict between France and England. 

The Hundred Year War (1337-1453) with various battles continuing until the mid-1500s sounds like a terrible time to be alive. One of the more widely-known battles (thanks to Shakespeare) was fought by Henry V at Agincourt. Shakespeare's play and various ballads written about this battle feature, of all things, the game of tennis.

By 1415, negotiations between England and France about territory, recompense for past wrongs, and proposed marriages to join the warring countries had ground to a halt. In the stalemate, the Dauphin (heir to the French throne) sent Henry a chest of tennis balls to taunt him about his reputation for being a careless pleasure-seeker and idler before he became king (just two years prior). It was a scornful and insulting royal gift.

The enraged Henry V invaded France, saying the French had mocked the English claims and ridiculed Henry himself. His troops triumphed at Agincourt against the odds, and Henry eventually secured control of the French throne.

The movie Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead features these two minor characters from Shakespeare's Henry V playing a game of 'tennis' on the royal courts in France, using questions rather than balls. It signifies the high profile of the game among royalty at this time, and how potent the insult to Henry would have been. If you're at all into language games, it's a great scene. (If it won't play below, you can watch it on Youtube.)

The wars continued until England defeated France in 1546. The reign of Henry VIII (1509–47) saw English nationalism rise, significant reforms to the church, and the formal restoration of English as the language of the court and governance. This meant cleansing English all the 'corruptions' of French language and custom ... but they kept tennis. Henry was reportedly playing what was called 'royal tennis' when news of Anne Boleyn's execution arrived.

However, it was not long before a deeply conservative reaction erupted against Henry VIII's extensive reforms. The country turned to Puritanism. The game of tennis was no longer 'appropriate'.

Tennis was largely abandoned by the royalty under Puritanism in England and under the Napoleonic wars in Europe. Various other racket sports emerged away from the royal limelight, including a form of lawn tennis.

Anyone fancy a spot of sphairistike?

Lawn tennis in 1887. Source

What we now recognise as tennis was claimed to be 'invented' by Major Wingfield in 1874, who ignored that a form of tennis already existed. 

Part of his (and others) attempt to patent tennis involved specifying a new court size and shape, creating a new scoring system and coming up with a new name. Wingfield originally called his version of the game sphairistike, from Greek sphaira meaning 'globe, ball' and tekhnē meaning 'skill or art'. It reminds me of gymnast and athlete, other Greek words that don't take -er). 

This clumsy name didn't catch on, although some called it 'sticky' for a while. So, the English chaps claiming to 'invent' the game then adopted the existing name tennis (originally from French tenez centuries prior) and much of the French vocabulary for the scoring, hence the words love (possibly from l'oeuf (meaning 'egg shaped' or zero) and deuce ('to both is the game'). None of the proprietary claims succeeded. However, the 'new' game quickly became very popular across the world.

The research findings

So, that's why we don't say the word tenniser. The word tennis behaves like other words that are lifted directly and fairly recently from French, despite the long-term use of the word in English. The recent revival and the numerous proprietary claims on the game and name are also likely to be a factor.

Now, I'm wondering if I'd played more tennis this summer, and spent less time researching the word tennis, I might actually be a better tenniser.

(Interestingly, I did find tenniser in a Dictionary of Neologism 1941-1991. The word was listed as a neologism in 1953, meaning tennis player. Obviously, it didn't catch on. The book also included the new words telethon (1953) - TV show to raise funds for charity, which we still use; and throbber (1959) - one who prefers guesswork to investigation and reinforces their beliefs by asserting them frequently, which we don't use, but perhaps need!)


Image credits, used under Creative Commons Licences

• beach cricket: laneylou  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beach_cricket.jpg [CC BY]
• wrong kind of agent: Public Domain http://clipart-library.com/clipart/n29859.htm 
• parachutist: Unknown https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2015/07/19/09/58/parachute-851321_960_720.jpg
• taekwondo: Public domain https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=446889
• soccer: Unknown  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soccer_in_Canada [CC BY SA]
• le jeu de palme: Public Domain https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15767017
• lawn tennis in 1887: By Prang (L.) & Co. Public Domain https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3842094

References

• Etymology Online https://www.etymonline.com/
• Fifty Years Among the New Words: A Dictionary of Neologisms 1941-1991 https://www.booktopia.com.au/fifty-years-among-the-new-words-john-algeo/book/9780521449717.html