just saw someone's statement that in Hawaii they are called flip flops, but that does not rule out the possibility that an Indian saw them first time worn by someone in Hawaii and himself named them Hawai Chappal not bothering to know their Hawaiian name. This is a very common practice all over the word. If people see something associated with a country they just name it according to that regardless of what that thing is actually called in that country. For example "tamarind" is called "imli" in India, but when the Arabs saw it first time they called it "tamar Hindi" meaning "Indian date" and this name later changed to "tamarind" in English. Now if someone says that "tamarind" has nothing to do with India, because it is not called with that name in India, he will be absolutely wrong because the Arabs who saw this did not and possibly could not know its Indian name so they just called it "indian date" so the assumption that people called flip-flops "Hawaii Chappal" because their first association of this was with Hawaii and/or they were manufactured by Scott Hawaii may not be correct but rejecting it just on the basis that they are not called by that name in Hawaii is not fair. I agree that I have no proof for my assumption, but neither do the people who say that it is the translation of "air sandal". Why do you think think that Indians are so stupid that they would call something "air sandal" which has nothing to do with air 

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