Origin of "King Kong" (Chinese? Courting frogs?)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 12/31/05, Bapopik at aol.com <Bapopik at aol.com> wrote:
>
> "King Kong" logically followed other, similar jungle stories (see the essay
> at the bottom of this post).
> ...
> What about the name "King Kong"? Where did the authors (Merian C. Cooper
> and Edgar Wallace) get it?

I recently picked up _Living Dangerously: The Adventures of Merrian C.
Cooper_ by Mark Cotta Vaz, which is quite a good read. The origins of
the "Kong" name are not exactly clear, but some light is shed by
correspondence between Cooper and his friend and fellow adventurer W.
Douglas Burden. When Cooper was first formulating the "Kong" movie in
1929-1930, he spoke with Burden about his 1926 trip to Komodo Island
in the East Indies (now Indonesia), where he led an expedition
sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History to bring to the
West the first live Komodo dragons. Cooper was inspired by Burden's
story of capturing "primeval monsters" from a "lost world" and how
their spirits were broken in captivity. (The two live Komodo dragons
were brought to the Bronx Zoo and quickly died there.) Here's an
excerpt from a 1964 letter from Burden to Cooper reminiscing about
their conversations:

"I remember, for example, that you were quite intrigued by my
description of prehistoric Komodo Island and the dragon lizards that
inhabited it. ... You especially liked the strength of words beginning
with 'K,' such as Kodak, Kodiak Island, and Komodo. It was then, I
believe, that you came up with the idea of Kong as a possible title
for a gorilla picture. I told you that I liked very much the ring of
the word...and I believe that it was a combination of the King of
Komodo phrase in my book and your invention of the name Kong that led
to the title you used much later on, _King Kong_." (Vaz, p. 193)

The book that Burden mentions is _Dragon Lizards of Komodo_ (1927). In
it, Burden mentions that the expedition's herpetologist, F.J. Defosse,
said before leaving the island, "I would like to bring my whole family
and settle here, and be King of Komodo."

In response to Burden's letter, Cooper wrote, "Everything you say is
right on the nose." But he did say that he conceived of a "Giant
Gorilla" before reading _Dragon Lizards of Komodo_, which reminded
Cooper of his own expedition to the Andaman Islands and the giant
lizards he saw there.

More on Burden's expedition here:
http://www.unmuseum.org/burden.htm


--Ben Zimmer