BRIDGEPORT, Pa. — The old joke with water polo is the horses never get wet – but the word polo in the sport’s title has little to do with its equestrian equivalent in the fraternity/sorority of sports.
Obviously, the water portion is self-evident (the entire course is water).
But why polo?
Two schools of thought exist as to why the name polo was fastened to the game.
The first states that the game of water polo resembles conventional polo – a game played on horseback between two teams, each of four players, the object being to score points by driving a wooden ball into the opponents’ goal using a long-handled mallet. In addition, the game is thought to have been derived from water rugby – a game similar to its land sport equivalent.
However, the most probable implementation of the word “polo” per historians comes from the Balti language as the first games played in England during the late 1880’s featured a ball constructed of India rubber. In the Balti language, which is a Tibetic language spoken in the Baltistan region of Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan, the Nubra Valley of Leh district, and in the Kargil district of Jammu and Kashmir, India, the world for ball is “pulu” which when pronounced in English is polo. So the name of the game is literally “water ball” which is probably more appropriate than other sports as hockey comes from hoquet, a Middle French word for a shepherd’s staff, while soccer comes from the original title of the sport “association football” being shortened by the British 200+ years ago.
