Pajamas is a funny word – I have a pair with feet and ducks on them and usually refer to them as jammies or PJs. Our friends from Zimbabwe spell the word “pajamas,” and refer to them as sleeping attire. The word pajama was “invented” in the Hindi language (one of the most popular languages in India) by combining the Persian word “pai,” which means leg with another Persian word “jamah,” that means clothing. The Hindi word “paejama” was picked up in the English language in probably the early 19th century and spelled “pajamas,” that finally became pajamas as we’re used to seeing it written.
I don’t think anybody’s sure, but I suspect that the person that should get the credit for making pajamas an icon of American life is Hugh Hefner – I’m pretty sure he hasn’t worn anything else since about 1954.
The original pajamas were loose-fitting trousers worn during the day by workers in India and adopted as sleep ware by European colonialists. Currently pajamas usually mean something that covers the upper body – not just the trousers. The matching jacket or top was probably added when the pajamas were brought back to the chillier climate found in Europe.
Even today, pajamas are only considered sleep ware (except by Hugh Hefner) in the West – in India and the far East (where they originated) they are everyday wear to be worn in the street…
Pajamas took on a new meaning during the Viet Nam War. The Viet Cong (VC) adopted Black PJs as their uniform. During the early 1960s, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) was not clearly involved in the war – the South Vietnamese guerilla/insurgent, known as the Viet Cong (Southern communists living in South Vietnam) was the enemy. Like any guerilla/insurgent, they supplied themselves, with whatever they could obtain. These VC were normal citizens by day and enemy soldiers by night. Black clothing – both shirt and trousers were commonly worn by many South Vietnamese people. It turns out that after some fire fights and the bodies of some of the VC were searched, they were wearing those black shirts and trousers – which to the normal American male, looked just like pajamas. So, black PJs became our (the Americans) acceptance of the VCs uniform.
One thing I heard (repeatedly) while in Vietnam was that the black PJs made it harder for GI Joe to see at night. Unfortunately, they also had a negative overall impact by making many GIs believe that anyone wearing black PJs was the enemy. That, of course, played right into the hands of the Communists.
So it appears that pajamas, that funny sounding word, has had quite an impact on us all either directly or indirectly. Whether you call them pajamas, jammies, PJs or sleep costumes or had nightmares about black pajamas, or remember sleeping with PJs with feet and bunnies, read Hugh Hefner’s magazine, or envied him or just saw The Pajama Game on broadway, you just can’t get away from them – they truly are an American icon; there’s even an old Groucho Marx joke about pajamas that goes something like, “One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I’ll never know.”
So there you have it, Mike and John – that’s how pajamas came to be…
-30-