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

[Page Stephens]

Has anyone except me ever heard the story that the computer game Donkey
Kong was called Donkey Kong because it was originally called Stupid Monkey
in Japanese and mistranlated into English as Donkey Kong?

I doubt that this is true but a friend of mine swears that it is.

Given all of the horrible translations of computer instructions from
Japanese into Chinese into Hungarian into German, etc.it wouldn't surprise
me a lot but it just sounds too good to be true.

If anyone out there would like to write an article about the socalled
English in the instructions which come with everything from assemble it at
your risk desks to cell phones to computers I would love to read it.

I could be wrong but my guess is that you would have to be multilingual
even to guess what original language they were originally written in.

Page Stephens


> [Original Message]
> From: Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Date: 1/9/2006 4:20:43 PM
> Subject: Re: Origin of "King Kong" (Chinese? Courting frogs?)
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Origin of "King Kong" (Chinese? Courting frogs?)
>
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>
> On 1/9/06, Chris Waigl <cwaigl at free.fr> wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Chris Waigl <cwaigl at FREE.FR>
> > Organization: sadly lacking
> > Subject:      Re: Origin of "King Kong" (Chinese? Courting frogs?)
> >
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> >
> > On Mon, 9 Jan 2006 15:00:50 -0500, Wilson Gray typed:
> >
> > > 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.
> >
> > The Swedish Wikipedia gives the title as "King Kong", though
> > <http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Kong>. On the page for the 1933
> > film, "Originaltitel: King Kong" is indicated in addition, so the
> > first "King Kong" refers to what the movie is known as in Sweden.
> >
> > I saw the 1933 film as a child -- it belonged, to me, firmly into the
> > "horror movie" category, of which I wasn't fond. If I had any
> > interpretation of the name, it would would have been that it was some
> > sort of fake Chinese, like ching-chong, ping-pong etc. That was at a
> > time when I was quite aware of the meaning of the English word "king".
> >
> > Chris Waigl
> > (yes, I know about onomatopoeia. now.)
> >
>
>
> I also saw the movie when I was a child, ca.1944. I likewise
> considered it to be a horror movie. But I loved such films, as long as
> I was accompanied by an adult or a bunch of my buddies. I've never
> understood how anyone could say that scary movies cause nightmares in
> children.
>
> I never gave a thought to a possible meaning for the title. I knew
> that an animal could be called "King" ("On, King! On, you huskies!" as
> Sgt. Preston of the Royal Mounties was wont to shout). BTW, didn't the
> natives refer to the Great  Ape as merely "Kong"? If that's true, do
> you know how it was, within the movie, that Kong came to be given the
> honorific of "king"? Was it just a showbiz thing, given to Kong as he
> was about to be taken on the road?
>
> As for the Scandinavia claim, I most likely got it from _Reader's
> Digest_, of which I was once an avid reader, prior to reaching
> puberty. ;-) Unfortunately, I'm now once again a reader of RD. :-)
> But, of course, I no longer believe everything that I read in it.
>
> -Wilson
>
> -Wilson