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Origin of Kong's name?

Author	Comment
Kaijubait	Origin of Kong's name?	Lead	[-]
Jan 2 09 11:15 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I don't recall hearing Cooper, or anyone else, talk about how the name of 'Kong' was arrived at. Maybe its mentioned on one of the DVD documentaries and I've just forgotten - guess I'll have to watch them again. I can't help but wonder if it was inspired by the Monkey King, who is known in traditional Chinese as Sun WuKong.
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davlghry		#1	[-]
Jan 3 09 12:37 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Just spitballing here... Gorillas were associated with Africa. The Congo was a little explored part of Africa that conjured up mystery, danger and the unknown. Add to the mix that Congo was sometimes spelled Kongo. Perhaps to a 1933 audience "Kong" had just the right sound for the name of a giant gorilla. Cooper and Schoedsack had also had an earlier success with CHANG.
The Giant Pacific Octopus		#2	[-]
Jan 3 09 9:34 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Well, according to the book Living Dangerously: The Adventures of Merian C Cooper, Cooper loved hard sounding words that started with the letter "K". (He had an affinity for the word "Kodak"). Before Kong, he wanted to have gorillas fight Komodo Dragons (Douglas Burden's trip to the Komodo Islands and his encounter with the Dragons there, was a major inspiration for Skull Island and the Dinosaurs), and he wanted to capture gorillas from the Congo and have them taken to Komodo to fight Komodo Dragons. It was Komodo and C(K)ongo (and his love for hard sounding K words) that gave him the idea to name the giant ape Kong. (This was according to Douglas Burden). As for King, that was David O Selznick. He didn't want audiences to think that this film was another Docu-Drama like Grass or Chang. He didn't want the title to have just the one word, so he came up with the "King" part of Kong's name. When the film was under the working title The Beast, RKO made some suggestions to Cooper via memos for a new title. The titles they suggested were Kong: King of Beasts Kong: The Jungle King Kong: The Jungle Beast Selznick then took simply took "King" and added it to the monsters name. RKO filed the copyright for the name King Kong on Feb 24 1933.
Kingkongkessler		#3	[-]
Jan 3 09 10:55 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	The Giant Pacific Octopus wrote: Well, according to the book Living Dangerously: The Adventures of Merian C Cooper, Cooper loved hard sounding words that started with the letter "K". (He had an affinity for the word "Kodak"). Before Kong, he wanted to have gorillas fight Komodo Dragons (Douglas Burden's trip to the Komodo Islands and his encounter with the Dragons there, was a major inspiration for Skull Island and the Dinosaurs), and he wanted to capture gorillas from the Congo and have them taken to Komodo to fight Komodo Dragons. It was Komodo and C(K)ongo (and his love for hard sounding K words) that gave him the idea to name the giant ape Kong. (This was according to Douglas Burden). As for King, that was David O Selznick. He didn't want audiences to think that this film was another Docu-Drama like Grass or Chang. He didn't want the title to have just the one word, so he came up with the "King" part of Kong's name. When the film was under the working title The Beast, RKO made some suggestions to Cooper via memos for a new title. The titles they suggested were Kong: King of Beasts Kong: The Jungle King Kong: The Jungle Beast Selznick then took simply took "King" and added it to the monsters name. RKO filed the copyright for the name King Kong on Feb 24 1933. that's the same story I read Kess
hermanthegerm	Chang	#4	[-]
Jan 6 09 2:17 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Chang means elephant. "There is a lot of money tied up in this film and people expect to hear a boom when something blows up, so I'll give them a boom." George Lucas as quoted by Harlan Ellison's WATCHING
Godziwolf		#5	[-]
Mar 9 11 3:00 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	TCM played Chang a couple of weeks ago, finally got around to watching it on DVR. It's a neat movie (and has footage of the most elephants I've ever seen in one place), and really interesting commentary on Kong, as it's basically the movie Denham was setting out to make for the movie-within-the-movie. The ending narrative made me wonder when exactly it was that the world became small.
skull island escapee		#6	[-]
Mar 11 11 2:06 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I've only seen clips of this movie, Godziwolf, and if it's the shots I'm thinking of, the elephant stampede was very reminiscent of KONG'S rampage thru the native village . Cooper definately managed to get his own creative signature on KING KONG: it wasn't all down to O'Brien and his wonderful technicians. Cooper's and Schoedsack's stamp is recognizable in both their earlier documentary-like movies as well as Kong. 'the horror..............THE HORROR!' Cartoon-strip blog here [updated regularly]: http://zoomertoonsrabsmith.blogspot.com/
BijouBob8mm		#7	[-]
Mar 11 11 2:24 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	For a while, maybe back when the 1976 remake was in production and focusing the spotlight on the character, there was a story floating around that the word "kong" meant either "gorilla" or "king" in some obscure native tongue. Too long ago for me to recall where I came across that to determine how much credibility the source might have had. But, since the title CHANG meant elephant, it sounded plausible at the time.
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BijouBob8mm		#8	[-]
Mar 1 12 5:15 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Was reading a piece about fossils over at Wikipedia and came across this bit of trivia: Dinosaur fossils have been known for millennia, although their true nature was not recognized. The Chinese, whose modern word for dinosaur is konglong (恐龍, or "terrible dragon"), considered them to be dragon bones and documented them as such. "Konglong"--wonder if Cooper might have known that?
HalLane		#9	[-]
Mar 2 12 5:34 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I'll bet he did -- wasn't he originally going to do a movie with Komodo Dragons (I see Giant Pacific Octopus mentions them)?
BijouBob8mm		#10	[-]
Mar 15 12 8:58 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Yeah, Coop had been kicking around the idea of having a real gorilla fight a komodo dragon for a while...long before the optically enlarged lizards of ONE MILLION B.C.. I think it was his seeing (and shutting down production on) CREATION that caused him to scrap the idea of using live animals for his monsters, deciding O'Brien could help him better realize his plans.
cosmicjim		#11	[-]
Mar 18 12 11:57 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/8415 Peripherally related (still Kong-oriented), but I hadn't seen this before...
BijouBob8mm		#12	[-]
Mar 22 12 10:36 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Roadside attractions...as a kid in the Sixties, I remember a number of those from family vacations. (The History Channel did a documentary on them, no Kong alas, and used clips from some Castle Films releases about a few of the places.)
cosmicjim		#13	[-]
Mar 28 12 12:13 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	in the kong (spider pit) facebook group, i posted a small-town ny newspaper ad i found from january 1933 that advertises kongo as "kong".
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Origin of Kong's name?

Origin of Kong's name?