We always called them flip-flops, and I couldn’t stand to wear them. They always feel as though they’re about to fall off my feet. If I wear them, I seem to keep my toes clenched in an unconscience attempt to keep the “shoes” from slipping off. Try clencing your toes, hard, for several consecutive minutes. It hurts! My feet always ached terribly whenever I wore flip-flops.
Flip-flops is what everyone I knew growing up called them, except for a pretentious neighbor family that called them “zories” (sp?). I think it’s from the Japanese word for the (usually straw) ones.
Now that I think of it, how pretentious can you be if you’re wearin’ 'em, no matter WHAT you call 'em?
A pretty tough gang in Guam in the early 90’s was called “3F1BZ”, for “Three Filipinos with One Broken Zorrie”. Perhaps some juvenile offenders are just frutrated poets.
When I was a kid I called them by their rightful name: zoris. My mother was into them and even more into the companion sock, known to me as tabbies. (cotton with a separation between the big toe and the rest, with fasteners at the heel; you’ve all seen 'em on the feet of geisha).
Then I called them thongs, and now I call them zoris again.