this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2025
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It's because he's stubborn and they couldn't outright call him "ass"...
It's the Gordan Ramsey version of "donkey":
https://youtu.be/DBBY9fW74yM
Yep, it's a poor translation of essentially "stubborn ape"
I want to live in the timeline where we got Ass Kong though.
I'm reading that Shigeru Miyamoto purposefully named it "Donkey Kong" in English to imply "stubborn ape" and that it was not a mistranslation
Oh not a mis translation at all, just one that the audience didn't really understand at the time, I don't think. At least I know I didn't, until 20 years later when I read this somewhere on the internet. It makes sense once you know, but we all just kind of took the name at face value in the 80's and 90's and didn't really question it. "Kong" was recognizable enough but the "Donkey" part definitely just slid right off me.
To be honest I'm not sure what I would have called him instead to convey the same idea better, so fair enough, Mr. Miyamoto.
I certainly didn't understand it at the time. There was also a clone of Donkey Kong at the time named Crazy Kong, and as that name made more sense I thought that was the original at the time
It's not even a poor translation...
King Kong already existed, so they made him a "Kong" and he's stubborn so he's a donkey. 100% logical just more British English than American English.
Be the change you want to see in the world
inventing dimensional travel just to go to the Ass Kong reality