To properly explain his name, we must go back to the Crusades, where English soldiers played a similar but much more complicated game. This game was named Hazard and was finally passed on to the French who took it to North America when they settled there. At that time, the game was so simplified that it could easily be played on the street. Therefore, the name of the game is also the one that is a shortened version of the French word for toad, namely Crapaud. It was called that because people looked like toads when they squat around the cubes while playing.