Many languages borrow the English word string to refer to this type of underwear, usually without the G. Another common name is tanga (or sometimes string tanga), especially in the German Tanga. A frequent metaphor, especially in Brazil, is dental floss; in Brazil a thong is called fio dental (Portuguese for ‘dental floss’); in English, the term “Butt floss” is sometimes used. In Lithuanian it is siaurikės (‘narrows’), in Italian perizoma or tanga, in Turkish ipli külot (‘stringed underpants’), and in Bulgarian as prashka (прашка), which means a slingshot. In Israel the thong, mostly the G-string, is called khutini’ (חוטיני), from the word khut, which means ‘string’. Similarly, in Iran, it is called shortbandi (شورت بندی) in which short (شورت, from English: shorts) means ‘briefs’ and bandi means ‘with a string’. A Puerto Rican Spanish slang term, used by Reggaeton artists, is gistro.

Some names for the thong make reference to the bareness of the buttocks, such as the Spanish word colaless. (The word’s origin is probably connected to the English term topless but in reference to cola, a colloquial word meaning ‘butt’ in South American Spanish.) In some other languages the “T”-like shape of the back is emphasised. In Chinese, the thong is commonly called dingziku (丁字褲/丁字裤) which literally means '丁 character pants’ (or roughly, ‘T-letter pants’). In Korean, it is called 티팬티 (T panty). The term T-back is sometimes used in English, as in the novel T-Backs, T-Shirts, COAT, and Suit by E. L. Konigsburg.