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.