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. At first, table tennis had other names, such as indortennis. 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".