Your Favorite Sandals Are Named After a Hebrew Word

I got my first pair of Teva sandals well into my 20s. Having grown up in Israel, my parents were enthusiasts of the (unfortunately named for the international market) Nimrod, a brand started by a Galician Jew all the way back in 1920s.

I had been vaguely aware of other sandal brands as a kid — Shoresh, Teva Naot, Gali — but Nimrod was the one my mom was the most loyal to. As an adult, it took me a while to find a brand of sandals that fit my feet anywhere near as well as those childhood sandals (as much as I want to be a Birkenstock girl, I never found a way to be comfortable in one).

When I got my first pair of Tevas, it was, quite honestly, a revelation. I was so comfortable. My feet weren’t schvitzy. I had a pair for the splash pad with my kids, and a pair for summer hikes and long walks throughout the city. Not thinking too deeply about it, I thought that Teva Naot, the company I grew up surrounded by, was the same brand.

But turns out, Teva sandals have completely different origins, even if both sandals are named after the same Hebrew word.

So, who invented Teva?

Back in the 1980s, Mark Thatcher was a Colorado river rafting guide who just didn’t want to lose his flip-flops to the current. A Grand Canyon runner, he also wanted shows that would allow him to run while being as close to barefoot as possible.

And well, the young man got pretty serious about it.

“I had seen the Velcro watchband, which was an inspiration for the ankle enclosure. I studied the morphology of the foot, looked at the ankle, and I started precise engineering. I delaminated a pair of flip flops, sewed the nylon pieces together, and that became the first sport sandal ankle strap,” he told Forbes back in 2019.

Thatcher (not to be confused the son of the British former prime minister with the same name) launched the brand in 1984, and got in a partnership with Decker Outdoors Corporation in 1985. He sold the company to Decker in 2002 for “$43 million in cash and issue stock valued at roughly $13 million,” according to Chief Marketer.

Where did the name Teva come from?

Thatcher was as serious about finding a good brand name for his creation as he was about engineering the perfect outdoor sandal. He thought about other two-syllable brand names that resonated.

Then, he recalled the Israeli nature guide he met while traveling to the country solo as a teen (he left home at 15). They called him a “”Shomer Teva,” literally a “guard of nature.” So yes, Teva sandals are named after the Hebrew word for nature. The word apparently dates back to Hebrew philosophy and science writings from the Middle Ages, and comes from the same root of the word “to drown” as well as “to make an imprint or a cast.” It’s an incredibly common Hebrew word, which leads us to perhaps the most important question of all…

Is it pronounced tee-vah or teh-vah?

If you speak any Hebrew, you might have guessed that the correct pronunciation is teh-vah, which is the correct way to pronounce the Hebrew word. A video of Teva staff pronouncing their company’s name confirms it, and leaves me pretty impressed with their Hebrew pronunciation abilities.

@teva

Of course, we wear SocksAndSandals, care about recycled material, and correct the pronunciation (Spoiler alert: it’s not Tee-va). That’s how you know you work at Teva without saying, you work at Teva.

♬ original sound – Teva

What’s the difference between Teva and Teva Naot?

They’re two completely different companies with different origins stories. While Teva was founded 1984 and is based in California (the company’s only substantial connection to Israel is its name and the inspiration behind it), Teva Naot, known to many as simply Naot, is a much older company, that predates even the foundation of the state of Israel. It was started in Kibbutz Naot Mordechai in 1942, though the sandals were modernized in the late 1980s to help the company and the kibbutz survive financially.

You can still buy Naot sandals to this day, on their websites and in local shoe stores, and while I’ve personally never worn a pair, I still feel like I can vouch for them — my late grandmother was a big fan.