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January 26, 2007
My Donkey Kong Naming Theory
 | Before the internet could assume its fundamental duties of myth-busting and old-wives-tale-wrastlin', there was a rumor going around that Nintendo meant to call the gorilla from landmark game Donkey Kong "Monkey Kong," but the "M" got changed into a "D" along the way. I see the logic: DK is a "monkey" and not a "donkey" (but he is an ass, regardless. Try the veal.) Or perhaps, game creator and green-mushroom=1UP-innovator Miyamoto Shigeru found the word "donkey" in a (completely worthless) dictionary as a synonym for "dumb." |
Snopes debunks the stuffing out of both theories and explains that Miyamoto picked "Kong" from "King Kong" (but not King Kong, legally speaking) and "Donkey" to "convey a sense of stubbornness." I also seem to remember quotes from Nintendo that they wanted to make the character a ridiculous and laughable version of King Kong.
So, what word acts as an antonym to the grace and divine providence represented by a king? A donkey makes sense looking back onto the problem, but why pick a donkey out of all the second-class creatures that could possibly denote the opposite of a king?
In Japan, almost everyone is familiar with the old story - "The King's Got Donkey Ears" (王様の耳はロバの耳）- which comes from an unnecessary add-on to the King Midas "everything I touch turns to gold" myth. A god gives King Midas donkey ears to visually mark the king's idiocy, only his hairdresser knows, Midas tells him not to tell anybody, the hairdresser digs a hole and whispers his secret into the ground, some people unfortunately hear the information from the reeds in this location, the rumor spreads, and Midas wants to kill his hairdresser in revenge but decides against it, because he's a reformed monarch now. Moral of the story: yes, hairdressers are gossip-hounds, but reeds are much, much worse about spreading rumors. I had never heard of this story before coming to Japan (and Japanese sites seem to inaccurately ascribe it to Aesop), but I often see the title referenced and have yet to meet a Japanese person unfamiliar with the fable. (937,000 Google hits.)
The name of this myth perfectly sets up the "King - Donkey" binary. The King gets goofy looking donkey ears until he starts acting with a little more class. So if you are going to make an opposite of King Kong, what do you name the guy? Donkey Kong. (And what do you name his son? Donkey Kong Jr. And what does he teach? Donkey Kong Jr. Math. And who plays that game? Absolutely no one.)
Now I don't think Miyamoto wanted to specifically reference the fable in his creation of the ape character's name, but I can't help thinking that the widespread familiarity with that story made the donkey an obvious animal of choice when looking for a polar opposite of "king." But then again, this is a guy who thinks you should get more fireworks if you end your level run with 1, 3, or 6 seconds on the clock. There's no fable-based precedent for that creative decision.
Posted by marxy at January 26, 2007 2:56 PM
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Comments
Once Asian studies discovers Gaming studies, both fields will explode into fireball of hastily written dissertations. Mario X Narratology X East Asian subjugation of women in the post-colonialism era = Masters Thesis ^ 1,000,000 + 1-up.
Posted by: Carl at January 26, 2007 4:03 PM
Sociolinguistic Gameography: it's the graduate-level field I was born to put off applying for!
Posted by: Ryan Cousineau at January 26, 2007 5:03 PM
To quote Professor Hubert Farnsworth: "Monkeys aren't donkeys. Quit messing with my head!"
Posted by: Brian at January 26, 2007 10:10 PM
I have a memory from the distant past of reading about the origin of Donkey Kong's name in Nintendo Power magazine which gives a spin to your "worthless dictionary" aside. Granted this is going back about 20 years. I can corroborate your memory of Nintendo wanting to make a laughable version of King Kong, but in the article I read, I think it said that the word donkey (ドンキー？ 驢馬? I can't be sure which the might have been referring to) actually meant "stupid" in Japanese, and when I first started learning the language I was pissed off that Nester had lied to me. (I mean, how many 10 year olds could have proved them wrong at the time?) Maybe the writer of that article got confused between donkey-horse驢馬 and horse-deer馬鹿...
How about Puckman becoming Pacman so vandals couldn't make the obviously tempting alterations?
Posted by: Laotree at January 26, 2007 10:14 PM
trivia note: DK Jr. Math used to go for 60,000 yen on the used market at a certain point due to its relative rarity.
Posted by: Chris_B at January 27, 2007 7:36 PM
Also - I was arguing with someone over this, and they said, if he wanted a "stubborn" animal, he would immediately think of a donkey. What about an ox? Isn't an ox MORE stubborn?
Posted by: marxy at January 28, 2007 10:58 PM
Hmm.....my votes on a derivation of 鈍器？鈍臭い？鈍...気？
Dunno, but they sound awful related.
I think the donkey is more famously stubborn than the ox. It's the poor man's uncooperative horse. Sidekicks always get stuck with a stubborn donkey, don't they?
Posted by: nms at January 29, 2007 2:18 PM
And just for the multi-culturalists: DONKEY is BURRO in Spanish, a language in which BURRO also means DUMB... :D
Posted by: kurisu at January 30, 2007 4:03 AM
It's funny I found this story because only the other day I thought to myself: "Aha! now I know why Donkey Kong has the name that he does! Donkey Kong is named after Don Quixote!"
It sounds strange but spend some time in Japan, you will realise it is true. Donkey is the shortened version of "Don Quixote", that Spanish adventurer from the medieval days who is hugely popular and loved in modern Japan. Don Quixote is commonly called "Donki" in Japan, and in fact there is a big cheap goods department store chain named "Donki" in his honor. To Japanese people, "Don Quixote" ("Donki") represents bravery and strength. Combine Don Quixote with King Kong and what you get (following the Japanese trend to shorten names) is "Donkey Kong". It is a no brainer really. Type in "Don Quixote" on the Japanese version of Google, and the top result points to this website: www.donki.com.
Visit this site if you want to see the impact of Don Quixote on Japanese animation, gaming, and the general Japanese imagination.
Posted by: CodeRot at February 9, 2007 8:01 AM
Interesting, but note that Don Quixote the store did not change their name to that until 1995.
""Don Quixote" ("Donki") represents bravery and strength. "
Miyamoto has made it clear that the ape character was not supposed to be brave as much as stubborn and silly.
Posted by: marxy at February 9, 2007 11:34 AM