Names for the number 0 in English the score was not placed upon a scoreboard, and there is scant evidence that the French ever used "l'oeuf" as the name for a zero score in the first place, that name being as anecdotal as the hypothesis that "love" is then derived from it. (Jacob Bernoulli, for example, in his "Letter to a Friend", used "à but" to describe the initial zero–zero score in court tennis, which in English is "love-all".) Some alternative hypotheses have similar problems. For example: The assertion that "love" comes from the Scots word "luff", meaning "nothing", falls at the first hurdle, because there is
History of tennis History of tennis The game that most people call 'tennis' is the direct descendant of what is now known as real tennis or royal tennis (which continues to be played today as a separate sport with more complex rules). Most rules of the game commonly known as tennis derive from it. It is reasonable to see both sports as variations of the same game. The idea that tennis originated in the monastic cloisters in northern France in the 12th century has been largely discredited, but it is correct that in the first few centuries in which it was played, the