In the history of sports, table tennis can be regarded as a young sport with a history of only 100 years. Compared with track and field (more than 2000 years), it is also a veritable junior.

1890, several naval officers stationed in India came across that playing tennis on a small table was quite exciting. Later, they used a small hollow ball instead of a solid ball with little elasticity and a wooden board instead of a racket to play this novel "tennis match" on the table, which is the origin of the name table tennis.

Soon after its appearance, table tennis became a popular sport. At the beginning of the 20th century, the United States began to produce complete sets of table tennis equipment. Initially, table tennis had other names, such as indoor tennis. Later, an American manufacturer created the new word "Ping-Pong" by the sound made when ping-pong was hit, and used it as the registered trademark of his patent. Ping-pong later became another official name of table tennis. When it spread to China, people created a new word "table tennis".

In Japanese, table tennis is called table tennis. Many words in table tennis come from tennis. The ball used for table tennis is called table tennis or table tennis, the table tennis table is called table tennis table, the table top is called court, the net in the middle is called net, and the shelf supporting the net is called net holder.

Table tennis singles generally adopt the system of two wins in three games or two wins in five games. The so-called "game" is set in English. Serving is called serving.