What It All Means

Jeans: During the Middle Ages, sailors from Genoa, Italy, were noted for their heavy cotton pants. French tailors later adapted the idea and created denim pants called genes, French for Genoa, which evolved into the American term jeans.

Denim: The tough cotton fabric loomed in Nimes, France, originally known as serge de Nimes, or denim for short.

Dungaree: From the Hindi word for dugri , or coarse cloth.

Levi’s: Named for Levi Strauss, the Bavarian-born son of a dry-goods peddler. He added copper rivets to reinforce the pockets of his denim trousers in the 1860s, patenting the idea in 1873.

501: The lot number of the 10-ounce denim originally used to manufacture the jeans.