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Lisa Lim

The Paris Olympics may be over, but the 2024 Paralympics is now in full swing.
Held shortly after the corresponding Olympic Games in the same year, the Paralympic Games are a quadrennial global multisport competition involving athletes with disabilities.
The origins lie in a sports competition organised by Dr Ludwig Guttmann of Stoke Mandeville Hospital in the UK, almost eight decades ago, for second world war soldiers with lower spinal cord injuries affecting their lower limbs.
The word for this condition is paraplegia, and it refers to the paralysis of the lower half of the body.
This is the Latinised form of the (Ionic) Greek word paraplēgia, meaning “paralysis of one side of the body”, from paraplēssein or “strike at the side” with the prefix “para-” meaning “beside”. A selection of meanings of this prefix in English are seen in words like parallel (“beside” + “one another”), paradox (“beyond” + “expectation”) and paramedic (“resembling” + “medic”).

Those with upper spinal cord injuries that cause impairment to the person’s upper and lower limbs are quadriplegics or tetraplegics – from Latin quadri- or Greek tetra- for “four”, referring to all four limbs.
The first Stoke Mandeville Games – an archery contest for wheelchair users – were held on the opening day of the 1948 London Olympic Games.
An oft-repeated pronouncement by Guttmann in 1952 – while the Olympic Games in Helsinki in Finland were in progress – was that “one day the paraplegic games would be as international and as widely known in its own sphere as the Olympics”.
It was one of many ways that the two events were explicitly associated with each other. It was then just a matter of time before – from a portmanteau of “paraplegic” and “Olympics” – the name was coined and used in the media.
A local newspaper, for example, featured the Stoke Mandeville Games in a piece titled “Paralympics Of 1953 – Just What The Doctor Ordered!”, while Time magazine featured an article titled “Paralympics Of 1953”.

The term was, however, not yet adopted as the Games’ name at the time – that did not happen until 1988.
The 9th annual Games in Rome, Italy, in 1960, which coincided with Rome’s Summer Olympics, were retroactively designated the first Paralympic Games, with the name first used officially at the Summer Games in Seoul, South Korea (the first time it was held in the same city as the Olympics).
The Summer and Winter Paralympics are now each held every four years.
Over time, the Paralympics has evolved. It has included, since 1976, athletes with different physical disabilities, as well as, since 1992, athletes with intellectual disabilities.
The formal narrative for its name has evolved in tandem to align with such inclusivity. Rather than stemming from a portmanteau involving the word paraplegic, the first element of the name is now explained as deriving from the Greek preposition παρά, pará “beside” or “alongside” – to refer to a competition held in parallel with the Olympic Games.

With consistent usage, the prefix has now developed into the full-blown descriptor para – at times beginning with a capital P, at times followed by a hyphen – to reference an athlete or a sport involving athletes with a disability – for example, Para Games, para athletes or para-athletes, parasports and many individual sports’ names.
These include para badminton (which, in 2024, sees Hong Kong’s Daniel Chan Ho-yuen aiming for a medal), para athletics, para equestrian, para swimming, para table tennis – all of which feature Hong Kong para athletes in the 2024 Paralympics.
Such language change parallels the transformation in the positioning and recognition of athletes with disabilities, from being “beside”, “alongside” or “resembling”, to being celebrated in their own right.
What is crucial is that we move beyond the Paralympic paradox to genuine understanding of the everyday lives of most disabled people, and to meaningful social change.


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Where did the term ‘Paralympics’ come from? Examining its origin and evolution in meaning

The Paralympic Games began life as a sports competition for paraplegic soldiers, and the name reflected that. Over time, the term and the event have evolved. Photo: Kyodo

The Hong Kong China delegation departs for the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games from Hong Kong International Airport. The Paralympic Games are a global multisport competition involving athletes with disabilities. Photo: Eugene Lee

The Paralympic Games symbol at the Eiffel Tower on August 27, a day before the Games’ opening ceremony. The 9th annual Games in Rome in 1960 were retroactively designated the first Paralympic Games. Photo: Kyodo

Badminton players Chu Man-kai (left) and Daniel Chan Ho-yuen, and fellow members of the Hong Kong China delegation, depart for the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games. Photo: Eugene Lee

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Men’s badminton top seed Chu Man-kai won his first match in Paris. Photo: Reuters

Hong Kong’s Leung Yuk-wing, at his sixth Games, kicked off his Paris Paralympics with a win. Photo: Reuters

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The roots of the word genocide, the author who coined it to describe Nazis’ extermination of Jews, and the language used to incite it

Watch towers surround the Auschwitz II-Birkenau Nazi death camp in present-day Poland, one of several where Jews were exterminated in the second world war. The word genocide was coined in 1944 to describe Nazi Germany’s attempt to eliminate European Jewry. Photo: Getty Images

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Although the word began as a combination of the words ‘Olympics’ and ‘paraplegic’, the meaning of the term is now far more inclusive


The Paralympic Games began as a sports competition for paraplegic soldiers, and the name reflected that. Over time, the term has evolved along with the multisport competition itself.


Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


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Language Matters

Language Matters | Where did the term ‘Paralympics’ come from? Examining its origin and evolution in meaning

Although the word began as a combination of the words ‘Olympics’ and ‘paraplegic’, the meaning of the term is now far more inclusive