I grew up assuming the word ‘knickers‘ was an Anglicization of the Hindi ‘nikkar.’ But it turns out they’re the 200-year-old remnants of a viral marketing campaign by a struggling New York author. (This is as far as I’ve been able to trace it, corrections welcome.)

Washington Irving, who later wrote The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, was working on a history of the Dutch in New York and came up with an innovative idea to build buzz in 1809. He took out several ads in New York papers supposedly from a hotelier looking for a historian who’d disappeared without settling his tab. The owner said he’d found a manuscript in the guest’s belongings and threatened to have it published if the bill weren’t paid. (If only getting a book published were that easy.)

The New York cops took the ad seriously and began hunting for the missing Mr. Dietrich Knickerbocker, whose Dutch surname Irving had lifted from a friend. Irving eventually finished A History of New York and published it under the ‘Knickerbocker’ pen name. It was a hit. Father Knickerbocker became a symbol of New York, just like Uncle Sam. New Yorkers were called ‘Knickerbockers,’ an ethnic caricature like the Celtics or the Redskins. It’s sort of like calling everyone in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, ‘Kapadias.’ In fact, the New York Knicks’ first logo was Father Knickerbocker dribbling a basketball.

George Cruikshank, who also illustrated Charles Dickens’ books, drew the fictional Knickerbocker family in the customary Dutch knee-length breeches. From the similarity in shape, women’s undergarments got the ‘knickerbockers’ nick. This is a bit like calling white sneakers with jeans ‘kapadias’ (or in real life, a type of plaid half-pants ‘madras shorts‘). ‘Knickerbockers’ were shortened to ‘knickers,’ the Brits imported the sobriquet from their former colony, and it was Hindified to ‘nikkar’ — all from a Cloverfield-style marketing stunt in New Amsterdam.

Irving was also responsible for nicknaming New York ‘Gotham,’ which means Goat-ham or Bakripur. Not quite as fitting for a Gothic superhero flick when you think about it.