Pixie, Fairy, Butterfly Name origins

[Sitarski]

In tricks of trade these tricks were mentioned to have a lengthy reason why they were named this and that there wasnt enough time, now i am curious as to that long story... Anyone?

Adam

[King Monkey]

My only tidbit to add is that i beliiiieeeeve they were originally going to be called 'Thunder' and 'Lightning' sets instead of the current names...

[mitko]

Hihi I know this.
But yeah, dude I dont think this should be in Shred Symposium.
General Footbag, or even Tricks and Tips.
And there is a topic already, which is my favorite one, its about the names
and the history behind the footbag tricks, it should be somewere here.

[Outsider]

Adam, et. al.,

I don't really KNOW this so-called long story behind these trick names, but...

Regarding Butterfly, keep in mind that this is a very old footbag trick. Old, as in, back then jumping kicks (a.k.a. Flyers) were probably much more common than all our fancy stalls of today. This almost certainly had alot to do with the equipment available at the time, particularly the footbags. That is to say, bags were harder back then. Net was, like, the first real footbag competition, I guess, and you know that those guys like pretty hard footbags, nothing at all like what today's freestylers prefer. Furthermore, it sounds to me like most serious competitors in those days of old typically competed in both net and freestyle -- not as many people were specializing in freestyle-only. So, way-back-when, with a bit of a bias towards net, and without today's obvious necessity of nice soft bags, kicking moves dominated freestyle. Jumping tricks being known as "Flyers", as in Flying Clipper, Flying Inside, Flying Outside, etc., other early jumping-kick tricks were naturally given names with "-fly" in them, as in "Butterfly" and "Dragonfly". Yes, yes, all very obvious, I know. The important point to remember about "Butterfly" in particular was that the Jumping-Kick version of this move pre-dates the Stallling version. Calling a big jumping-kick move a "Butterfly" made perfect sense in that context. The stalling verions developing a little after, and having, initially, perhaps, less importance, it probably seemed sufficient at that time to simply call it a "Butterfly Stall" (as it is refered to on the first Tricks Of The Trade instructional video) rather than finding a whole different name for the move.

As for Pixie and Fairy, keep in mind also that these moves were not ORIGINALLY conceived of as sets to be combined with other moves. Rather, they were moves done on their own (as in Toe Stall > Dex > Op Toe Stall, no other components). And, done as such, they probably seemed like cute little moves... At the very least, a name like Lightning probably seemed a little to extreme for doing a simple little Around-The-World and bailing to opposite toe stall. But I'm not really certain about all this. Sadly, I wasn't there.

[professor]

I love how Jon knows almost everything about footbag history. I love learning about this stuff.

[james_dean]

I remember reading that pixie and fairy were co-invented on the east and west coast of america and the other group named them lightning and thunder, but pixie and fairy won... Can anyone clarify? (If true, it may say something about early footbaggers. 'Lightning? Thunder? Are you kidding, Pixie and Fairy are way cooler!!!' )

[Tsiangkun]

Scott liked thunder and lightning, but I don't think those ever caught on outside of chicago.

[Frank_Sinatra]

I don't know how much those caught on inside of Chicago either.

[CIC flurry]

Jon, you made me think that people just extended the use of little flying creatures like butterfly and dragonfly to other little flying creatures like pixie and fairy.

[Outsider]

Tom,

Thats a pretty interesting observation. I never put 2 and 2 together there, buy you might be on to something.

[crazylegs32]

Isnt it obvious- Steve G named pixie and fairy