Flip-flops name: The thong remains the same -

Around 2008, Ann Hamilton Shields was in a nurses’ locker room at Landstuhl military hospital in Germany, changing out of her scrubs.

“Where are my thongs?” she muttered while scrabbling around on the floor for her footwear. “Who took my thongs?”

Wrote Ann, of Arnold, Md.: “All conversation ceased. I stood up to see shock and pity on the faces of the 20-something military nurses. They were not old enough to know the real name, and thought the old dinosaur had lost her underpants.”

And that is why they call English a living language.

On Monday, I wrote about what most people these days call “flip-flops,” but which I grew up calling “thongs” and My Lovely Wife grew up calling “zories.” It was a disquisition on the vagaries of memory, and it dredged up plenty of memories — and synonyms — in readers’ minds.

Marge Kumaki pointed out that the Japanese word for flip-flops is “zori.” Wrote Marge, of Silver Spring: “I would suspect that since your lovely wife was a child in Southern California, the Japanese-American influence caused retailers there to use the original word for the product.”

Monica Nelson remembers getting ready for Girl Scout camp in the late 1960s. The packing list included “zories for pool.” She and her mother had no idea what that meant. The dictionary didn’t help and there was no Google back then.

“[Mom] said, ‘Bring your flip-flops. You’ll need them anyway,’” wrote Monica, of Fairfax. “Little did we know.”

Lisa Youngborg said the kids in Pacific Palisades, where my wife spent her early years, may have worn zories, but the beach crowd of Redondo Beach wore “go-aheads.”

Wrote Lisa, of Lexington Park, Md.: “All the old beach babes agreed: Go-aheads were the way to go! Although we still don’t know how the name originated.”

Oh, there are plenty of theories. Frank Spink of Baileys Crossroads, Va., first heard the term in the Navy, when he was stationed at what today is called the Concord Naval Weapons Station. They were called “go-aheads,” Frank wrote, “because you can’t easily walk backwards in them.”

Jo Ann Etter’s husband, Bob, lived in Hawaii in the early 1960s when his father was in the Navy.

“I remember the first time I heard him call flip-flops ‘go-aheads,’” wrote Jo Ann, of Severna Park, Md. “He told me his Mom called them that from when he could remember living in Hawaii. You simply slip your feet in and ‘go ahead.’”

The District’s Gretchen Willson first heard the term when she was 13 years old and her family moved to the island of Oahu. That was in 1956.

Wrote Gretchen: “I think that was an apt term because, until one got used to wearing them, they could actually slip off and go ahead of you.”

For Jeff Wolfson of Potomac, it’s the other way around: “When they break, as they often do, your foot goes ahead of the useless wreck.”

Joan Murtagh travels often to Hawaii to visit her son and his family, who have lived there since 1990. Wrote Joan, from Takoma Park: “As anyone who has spent time in Hawaii can tell you, flip-flops are ‘slippers’ — pronounced ‘slippahs’ — and are properly removed before entering the home. Mahalo.”

Alexandria’s Mark Lappin was introduced to rubber thong sandals in the 1950s during his time in the Air Force. “They were always called ‘shower shoes’ then,” he wrote.

It was made clear to recruits that they did not want to be entering a public shower or latrine barefoot.

The word “flip-flops” is onomatopoeic. So are a lot of other names for the shoes.

When Bob Mulderig was growing up in Northeastern Pennsylvania, flip-flops were called “click-clacks.” This was usually shortened to just “clacks,” wrote Bob, who lives in the District now.

“I have yet to find anyone since leaving my home area after college who was familiar with that name,” he wrote

Meet Joanne Balzano. “Another word for ‘flip-flops’ that I used growing up in New Jersey, was ‘click-clacks,’” wrote Joanne, who now lives in Virginia.

Agnes DiPietrantonio is another Jersey girl, from the South Jersey Shore.

“We always referred to those rubber things as ‘slaps,’” wrote Agnes, who now lives Rehoboth Beach, Del.

When the District’s Jill Wiebe was small and living in central Wisconsin, her family called flip-flops “clippies” — “presumably for the clip-clip-clip sound they made when we walked,” Jill wrote. “In fact, I would deliberately clench my toes to make them noisier, like putting a card in the spokes of a bike.”

Richard Rodgers grew up around the world in an Air Force family.

“We always called flip-flops ‘scuffs,’” wrote Richard, who now lives in Arlington. “I admit that I never met anyone who did likewise, but I can’t believe my parents coined the name themselves.”

Not unless your long-lost brother is Joe Foley of North Potomac, who wrote: “We grew up in Northern Virginia in the ’50s and ’60s calling them ‘scuffs.’”

I’ll let Charley Mansueto of Silver Spring have the last word: “A man with two left feet goes in a shoe store and asks the salesman, ‘Do you sell flip-flips?’”

Twitter: @johnkelly

For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/john-kelly.

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