In numerical computations of tsunamis due to submarine earthquakes, it is frequently assumed that the initial displacement of the water surface is equal to the permanent shift of the seabed and that the initial velocity field is equal to zero and the shallow-water equations are often used to simulate the propagation of tsunamis. We give a mathematically rigorous justification of this tsunami model starting from the full water-wave problem by comparing the solution of the full problem with that of the tsunami model. We also show that, in some cases, we have to impose a non-zero initial velocity field, which arises as a nonlinear effect.