Ask for It by Name!

If at first you don’t succeed, change a consonant. But be sure to pick the right consonant.

Back in the late 18th century, rubber-soled canvas shoes were becoming popular in both Europe and the U.S. Sure-footed, comfortable and nearly silent compared to leather-soled boots and shoes, rubber-soled footwear even gave us the slang term “gumshoe” from the gum-rubber soled shoes favored by detectives on the prowl for miscreants.

In 1892, nine small companies joined together to form the U.S. Rubber Company. One of the member companies, the oddly-named Goodyear Metallic Rubber Shoe Company, happened to hold the license to Charles Goodyear’s “vulcanization” process, a revolutionary technology of heat-bonding rubber to fabric that was far superior to the old-fashioned glue method.

Within a few years of their confederation, the constituent companies of U.S. Rubber were marketing rubber-soled shoes under a bewildering array of thirty different brand names, and by 1913 the need to agree on a single brand had become obvious.

The first choice for a brand name was the logical and catchy “Peds,” from the Latin “ped” meaning “foot.” Unfortunately, “Peds” was already trademarked by one of the few companies not part of U.S. Rubber, so management apparently then sang a few rounds of “The Name Song” (Pedda pedda fo fedda, me mi mo fedda…), trying out new initial consonants. After exhausting all 25 permutations of “Keds,” two candidates remained by 1916: “Veds” and “Keds.” The choice between the wispy and vaguely creepy “Veds” and the hard-consonant All-American “Keds” was a no-brainer, and soon kids were skinning their knees in Keds sneakers all over the U.S. More fashionable and fancier rubber-soled shoes may have grabbed the spotlight since then, but Keds, now manufactured by The Stride Rite Corporation, keep ticking along.