Maybe they always come in pairs so you always have two, normally. My guess is the jeans (trousers) were originally considered as two pieces of garments like two socks without the heel, not sewn together. This was probably long ago, but language sticks and some things turn into expressions. Compare with the computer symbol for saving a file, it's a floppy disk! Ways change, but expressions stick. It'll be interesting to hear the real explanation now, this was just my guess.