page_title: Sneakers
section_title: Names and etymology
hierarchical_section_title: Sneakers / Names and etymology
caption_attribution_description: English: Reebok Royal Glide Ripple Clip men's shoe. Stacked image. This photograph was taken with a Panasonic Lumix DMC-G85/G80
context_page_description: Sneakers are shoes primarily designed for sports or other forms of physical exercise but that are now also widely used for everyday casual wear.
  Since their popularization by companies such as Converse, Nike and Spalding in the mid 20th century, they have become attire, with variety growing in many global markets exponentially. Like other parts of the global clothing industry, manufacture of shoes is heavily concentrated in Asia with 9 in 10 shoes produced in that region. Contemporary sneakers are largely made from synthetic materials, and the materials and manufacturing process produce, on average, about 14 kgs of CO2 emissions.
context_section_description: The shoes have gone by a variety of names, depending on geography and changing over the decades. The term "sneakers" is most commonly used in the Northeastern United States, South Florida and Central Florida, parts of Canada, and New Zealand. The British English equivalent of "sneaker" in its modern form is "trainer". In some urban areas in the United States, the slang for sneakers is kicks. Other terms include training shoes or trainers (Britain), sandshoes, gym boots, or joggers (Geordie English in the UK and Australian English), running shoes, runners, or gutties (Canada, Australia, and Scotland), daps in Wales, runners in Hiberno-English, sneakers (North America, New Zealand, and Australia), tennis shoes (North American and Australia), gym shoes, tennies, sports shoes, sneaks, takkies (South Africa and Hiberno-English), rubber shoes (Philippine English), track shoes (Singapore English), canvas shoes (Nigeria), and sportex (Greece)
  Plimsolls (British English) are "low-tech" athletic shoes and are also called "sneakers" in American English. The word "sneaker" is often attributed to American Henry Nelson McKinney, who was an advertising agent for N. W. Ayer & Son. In 1917, he used the term because the rubber sole made the shoe's wearer stealthy. The word was already in use at least as early as 1887, when the Boston Journal made reference to "sneakers" as "the name boys give to tennis shoes." The name "sneakers" originally referred to how quiet the rubber soles were on the ground, in contrast to noisy standard hard leather sole dress shoes. Someone wearing sneakers could "sneak up" on someone while someone wearing standards could not.
  Earlier, the name "sneaks" had been used by prison inmates to refer to warders because of the rubber-soled shoes they wore.
caption: Reebok sneakers
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