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

[Wilson Gray]

Supposedly, in Scandinavia, the movie has the title, "Kong King." In
contradistinction to English, in those countries, it's "kong" that
means "king," whereas "king" is just a noise to which any meaning can
be assigned.

-Wilson


On 1/8/06, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Origin of "King Kong" (Chinese? Courting frogs?)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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
>