Say "pyjamas" in London, Sydney or Toronto, and you are saying an Indian word. Most people who say it have no idea. It is one of the quiet gifts the subcontinent gave to English, and it sits inside every kurta pajama set.
Where the word comes from
The word comes from Persian pāy-jāma, meaning "leg garment", through Hindustani. Pāy is the leg or foot, and jāma is clothing. In Urdu it is the same word. In the earliest English records, from the early nineteenth century, it appears as pai jamahs and paee-jams, spelt however the writer heard it.
How it travelled
British colonists and soldiers living in India in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries took to the loose, light pajama for the heat, and carried the habit home. In Britain it became bedtime wear for men from around the 1870s, and from there it spread across the English-speaking world. The garment that Indian men had worn for centuries as everyday trousers became, abroad, the thing you wear to sleep.
Two spellings, one origin
The British spelling, pyjamas, and the American spelling, pajamas, come from the same two Persian syllables. Neither is wrong. They are two ways of writing a word that arrived by ear.
It is not the only one
Pyjamas keep company with other words English borrowed from Hindi and Urdu, many of them from clothing. Dungarees comes from dungri, a coarse cloth. Cummerbund comes from kamar-band, a waist band. Bandana comes from the Hindi word for tying. Jodhpurs are named after the city of Jodhpur. Outside clothing, shampoo began as the Hindi word for a head massage, bungalow as a house in the Bengal style, and loot as a Hindi word for plunder. A great deal of English walked out of India in a trouser pocket.
What we still call a pajama
In India the word still means what it meant: a loose, comfortable bottom worn under a kurta. A straight pajama is easy and cool for a long day. A churidar, gathered at the ankle, looks sharper at a wedding. A Pathani salwar is looser still. They are different cuts of the same old idea. If you wonder which suits an occasion, the haldi, mehendi and sangeet guide says which we reach for.
A small thing to say at dinner
Next time someone puts on pyjamas, you can tell them they are wearing an Indian word. And the next time you buy a kurta pajama set, you are buying the garment that gave English its word, in the place where it started. See our puja kurta pajama collection, or tell us your own kurta story.
Read more: Wikipedia on pajamas, the Online Etymology Dictionary and Wikipedia's list of English words of Hindi or Urdu origin.