The NFL used to be split into two organisations – the National Football League (NFL) and the American Football League (AFL).

After a merger agreement in 1966, the winner of both leagues would go head to head in an end-of-season match originally known as the AFL-NFL Championship game.

Lamar Hunt, the founder of the AFL and former owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, is the man credited with eventually naming this match the ‘Super Bowl’.

It has been reported the inspiration for the name came from seeing his children play with a ‘Super Ball’ toy.

In a piece Hunt wrote, external for the New York Times in 1986, he said it was in a committee meeting where he first put forward the ‘Super Bowl’ title.

“In a word, it was accidental… I do not recall any predetermined thought relative to this rather unhistoric moment,” he said.

“It probably registered in my head because my daughter and son had a children’s toy called a Super Ball and I probably interchanged the phonetics of ‘bowl’ and ‘ball’.”

But the name caught on. The 1969 match was the first AFL-NFL game that was officially called the Super Bowl.