suede

Suede comes from the French phrase gants de Suède, meaning "gloves from Sweden." English speakers borrowed just the word for Sweden and let it stand for the soft leather those gloves were made of.

What started as a description of a specific import — Swedish gloves — narrowed over time into the English name for the leather itself, detached from its geographic origin.

Suede is a doublet of Swede, meaning the two words trace back to the same source but arrived in English by different paths.