The term "line bracelet" is technically more accurate. It describes exactly what the piece is: diamonds or gemstones set in a continuous line, mounted in a flexible metal setting that wraps the wrist. Jewellers used this term for decades. It appears in catalogues from the 1950s and 1960s with no alternative name in sight.
"Tennis bracelet" describes an accident of association. A bracelet fell off at a tennis match. The bracelet became famous for falling off at a tennis match. Now all bracelets of that design are named after tennis.
Language works like this more often than we notice. We name things after the moment they entered our awareness, not after what they are. Panama hats have always been made in Ecuador. The turkey is named after a country it has never lived in. Venetian blinds, by most accounts, reached Venice from Persia. The names record a history of how things spread and who told the story first.
In the case of the tennis bracelet, the Chris Evert story gave a design that had existed for years a sudden cultural context. It made the piece legible to people who didn't speak the language of jewellery. You didn't need to know what a "prong-set diamond line bracelet" was. You knew it was the kind of thing someone wore to a Grand Slam and cared enough about to stop the match.
The name carried the feeling.
There's something to notice here about how things become desirable. It's rarely about the object alone. It's about the story that attaches to it - and once a story attaches, the original name barely matters.
