Godzilla’s name came from the Japanese words for ‘gorilla’ and ‘whale’!

Due to his strength and watery origin, the filmmakers originally described the monster as a cross between gorira (“gorilla”) and kujira ("whale"), coming up with the hybridized word “Gojira”. Of course, when this name became Americanized, we butchered this word even further, replacing the ‘j’ with a ‘dzi’ sound and the ‘r’ with a double ‘l’. It is not surprising that they chose to model their gigantic movie monster after a gorilla considering the success of America’s King Kong 20 years prior. Kong and Godzilla would actually do battle 8 years after the original Gojira film’s release in 1962’s King Kong vs. Godzilla. This basically served as the 1960s’ equivalent to Rocky IV with Japan in place of the Soviet Union. We know who wins the battle, but we’ll let you watch the movie yourself so we don’t ruin the surprise...
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