Origin of “Denim”

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant and Martha. This is Richard Valdez calling from Sugar Land, Texas.

Hi, Richard.

Hi, Richard. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. I was calling because this has been bothering me for a few years.

I was in France, in the south of France, a couple of years back, visiting a company that we were buying a piece of equipment from.

And our host, during dinner, I was asking, well, we were in Nîmes, a city of south of France called Nîmes, N-I-M-E-S.

And I asked him, well, what’s unusual about Nîmes? Is there anything to do here?

And he said, well, we’re known for a coliseum that’s here that’s more well-preserved than the Roman coliseum.

And we’re also known because during medieval times, we invented blue jeans.

I thought, well, that’s, you know, he’s putting me on. But he assured me he was serious.

And he said that back in medieval times, the weavers around Nîmes were famous for some fabric that they used to construct with a very tight weave.

And all around Europe at the time, they didn’t have a name for the fabric, but they started calling it the material de Nîmes.

Because in France and in Spain and Portugal and everywhere from Nîmes would be called denim.

And that became denim.

And I’ve always wondered if that story is true.

And if it is, how did denim become blue jeans?

Great question.

And the story is a little bit convoluted, but you’re right.

As far as we know, denim comes from that idea of that coarse cloth coming from France.

So the important part is the cloth comes from Neem, but not blue jeans themselves.

Right. That’s the important thing.

I see. So he was kind of half right.

Yeah, never take your etymological evidence from tour guides.

Yeah, that’s a hard and fast rule on this show.

The other part of the story is that there was also a tough, coarse cloth produced from cotton in the Italian port city of Genoa.

And the name of that cloth came to us via French, which was Jeanne, and came to English as Jean.

And that name was applied to the heavy cloth and then later to things made out of that heavy cloth.

And that same year, Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis got together and created a new kind of really sturdy pants that were useful for minors and people who were doing really heavy work.

They were reinforced with rivets at places where the pants might tear.

And they call those waist overalls because they only went up to your waist.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah. And eventually the name jeans got applied to those types of trousers.

So the fabric name was transferred to the garment name.

Yeah, yeah. So the fabric names coexisted for a long time.

And the original jean fabric and the original denim fabric weren’t exactly the same.

No, they were a little bit different.

They could be wool or cotton.

They might have a tighter weave, different colors, produced in different places, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

I see.

And in fact, the first trousers that Levi Strauss came up with were made either of indigo denim or a brown duck cloth.

Oh, interesting.

But also a very sturdy cloth.

Yes.

They could take the abuse of the mining fields.

Exactly.

I thought Levi Strauss had invented the whole thing, but here it came all the way from Genoa.

Yeah.

That’s great.

There’s another city name buried deeply in the story behind these, and this is fustian, which is a type of fabric.

So the jean fabric originally was a type of fustian, which is named from a suburb of Cairo where cotton weaving really became a thing originally.

So a lot of these fabric names have city origins because we’re talking about trading.

We’re talking about city-to-city trading, cotton moving from one country to another, textiles moving back, garments moving back the other direction.

And in each case, the city name somehow being relevant to the product as it’s moving across the world.

Well, another example of that is Dungarees, which take their name from a district of Mumbai in India, Dungaree.

And Madras Cloth as well, right?

Yeah, yeah. Paisley from a town in Scotland.

So we find this again and again and again, that the textile names frequently are related to the cities in which they originated or which they were known to be sourced.

That is, that they came through there, although the product, like the original cotton, might have come from the cotton fields on the banks of the Nile.

Yeah. So your tour guide was partly right, but the story is a lot more complicated.

And frankly, more interesting, I think.

Yeah. Yeah.

But that’s that’s great. I didn’t know.

You know, I always wonder about dungarees and all these others.

That’s that’s amazing.

Yeah, there’s actually, there is a fantastic group of paintings from, I think it’s the 17th century by a northern Italian painter who’s called The Master of the Blue Jean.

Google that and there are some amazing paintings from the 17th century with that cloth in it.

The next time I put on a pair of pants, I’ll be thinking about all these places.

I thought you were going to say you’d be thinking about us, but yeah, be thinking about all those places.

Thanks, Richard, for your call.

Hey, Richard, thanks for calling.

Thank you all very much.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

There’s a history behind every word.

Call us and find out.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.