Shigeru Miyamoto chose the name “Donkey Kong” deliberately. He wanted a name that suggested a silly gorilla, and he believed the English word “donkey” could also mean “someone stupid.” Nintendo of America did not hear that meaning in the word, but Miyamoto kept it because he found the name memorable. The sources describe a disputed creative choice, not a translation error that turned “Monkey Kong” into “Donkey Kong.”
What Miyamoto said about the name
In an interview Nintendo published on 4 November 2016, Miyamoto was asked about the game’s proposed name. His answer is the primary source for the naming story:
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“we wanted to give the game a name that would suggest a silly gorilla, so we called it Donkey Kong.”
He went on: “Donkey is the name of an animal, but looking it up in the dictionary, we found it can also mean someone stupid.” The interview is still available from Nintendo’s own site: Nintendo’s Classic Mini: NES special interview, Volume 1: Donkey Kong.
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Breaking down the two words
“Kong” and the gorilla
Miyamoto said he understood “Kong” to mean gorilla. That is his own understanding as the creator, not a formal etymology of the word. The creative intent was clear enough: the character was meant to be a gorilla, and the name was supposed to signal a clumsy or foolish one.
“Donkey” and the dictionary
The second word was the one that drew objections. Miyamoto said that looking “donkey” up in an English dictionary turned up the sense of “someone stupid,” and he chose the word for that reason. This is his stated reading of the dictionary entry. It does not establish how English speakers in general hear the word; many readers would take “donkey” as a plain animal name, which is exactly the tension the naming created.
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Nintendo of America’s objection
According to the 2016 interview, Nintendo of America told Miyamoto that “donkey” did not communicate “stupid” to them. Miyamoto did not change the name. He said he thought it was striking and would stick in people’s minds, and that was the reason he kept it.
The disagreement, then, was not about whether the gorilla was meant to look foolish. It was about whether the chosen word would carry that message to the people who would hear the name.
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Why the “Monkey Kong” story does not hold up
A popular version of the story holds that the name was a translation slip, with “Monkey Kong” becoming “Donkey Kong” somewhere in the process. The interview evidence does not support that. Both accounts describe Miyamoto choosing the word on purpose, and Nintendo of America’s objection is recorded as a response to the chosen name, not as a correction of a mistake.
A second account comes from Nintendo Online Magazine’s February 2000 interview with Miyamoto. The English version is preserved in an archive at The Mushroom Kingdom, which identifies the original Nintendo URL and credits a translator: The Mushroom Kingdom’s archive of the Nintendo Online Magazine #18 interview. In that translation, Miyamoto says he wanted a dumb character, believed Kong meant gorilla, and found the meaning he wanted for “donkey” in an English dictionary. Because this is a published translation rather than a direct English transcript, the wording should be read as the translator’s rendering of what Miyamoto said.
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What the sources establish, and where they stop
- Established: the name was a deliberate choice, made to suggest a silly gorilla, and it was tied to the dictionary sense of “donkey” as “someone stupid.”
- Established: Nintendo of America did not read the word that way and said so, and Miyamoto kept the name.
- Not established: any independent record of the naming decision. The account rests on Miyamoto’s own recollections in interviews from 2000 and 2016, and the cited sources do not include contemporaneous design documents.
- Not established: how the word would be heard by English speakers in general. The dictionary reading is Miyamoto’s, not a survey finding.
Context: the arcade game and its home versions
Donkey Kong started as an arcade game released in 1981. Nintendo’s 2016 interview was published in connection with the game’s 35th anniversary and also covers the Famicom and NES version, which is the context in which many players first met the character.
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