How did Lycra get its name?

Spandex has a clever name: it is an anagram of "expands." Lycra, the most famous brand of spandex, has no such story. The Lycra Company says the fiber was released "with a name randomly generated by a computer."

The fiber began as a lab code. DuPont chemist Joseph Shivers developed it, and the company first called it Fiber K. Wikipedia and the Lycra Company date the invention to 1958. A Chemical & Engineering News feature says 1959, after about a decade of research. Either way, DuPont then chose what that feature calls "the more mellifluous trade name Lycra" to set its brand apart.

The problem it solved was rubber. The Lycra Company says that in the Second World War, rubber was going to tires. Scientists went looking for a synthetic to replace it in girdles and foundation garments. Rubber shapewear, the company says, was hot, heavy and constricting. The company says the new fiber could stretch up to 500 percent of its length and return to shape.

The name never had to mean anything. Merriam-Webster treats Lycra simply as a trademark "used for a spandex synthetic fiber." Dictionary.com, drawing on Random House, calls it "a brand of spandex." Neither offers an etymology, because there is no root to trace.

That puts Lycra in a different camp from the generic names around it. Dictionary.com dates spandex to 1955 to 1960 and explains it as an anagram of expands. In much of Europe the same material is called elastane, in local variants. Lycra is the only one of the three that tells you nothing.

DuPont did not always name things this way. Its nylon was built partly from an arbitrary syllable plus the "-on" of cotton and rayon. Teflon came from syllables of a chemical name. Kevlar, like Lycra, has no agreed meaning at all.

The fiber spread fast. C&EN lists foundation garments and pantyhose in the 1960s, the French Olympic ski team in 1968, and cycling shorts and dancewear in the 1970s. The brand outgrew its parent too. It is now made by The Lycra Company, once a DuPont division, which Koch Industries sold to Shandong Ruyi in 2019.