The bikini swimsuit was named in 1946 after which Pacific atoll?

The bikini swimsuit was named in 1946 after Bikini Atoll, a Pacific atoll in the Marshall Islands. French designer Louis Réard chose the name because the garment was expected to create an explosive public reaction.

Réard unveiled his swimsuit in Paris on 5 July 1946, only days after the United States began nuclear-weapons testing at Bikini Atoll during Operation Crossroads. The timing made the atoll highly newsworthy, and Réard used its name to suggest that his revealing design would have a similarly dramatic impact on popular culture.

The bikini was not the first two-piece swimsuit. French designer Jacques Heim had introduced a competing two-piece called the Atome earlier in 1946, but it covered the navel. Réard’s version was more daring and was modeled at Paris’s Piscine Molitor by Micheline Bernardini, an 18-year-old dancer.

The atoll itself is part of the Marshall Islands and later became associated with 23 American nuclear tests conducted between 1946 and 1958. That history gives the fashion term a darker origin than many people realize. The name refers to the atoll, not to the neighboring Enewetak Atoll.