 A good friend named Ernest Pitiot was a local café owner.In order to accommodate his friend Lenoir, Pitiot developed a variant form of the game in which the length of the pitch or field was reduced by roughly half, and a player, instead of running to throw a boule, stood, stationary, in a circle.They called the game "pieds tanqués", "feet planted" (on the ground), a name that eventually evolved into the game's current name, "pétanque".