With the several posts recently about Tarzan I was wondering if anyone knows the story of how Edgar Rice Burroughs happened to chose that name for the jungle man. Smiley

Smiley, I believe that Edgar Rice Burroughs had first chosen the name "Zantar" for his hero (why, I'm not sure). Finally, he transposed to "Tarzan."

In the E.R.B. novels, Tarzan is derived from the two ape words TAR and ZAN, meaning white skin. It was given him by his foster mother, Kala, the great she-ape. That is the official explanation, but John may be right on as to how Burroughs chose the name initially.

I'm going to bow to the wiser heads on this one. I may have been duped on my expanzation. I saw a person on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson who claimed to be a relative of ERB. His story was that Burroughs lived in Tarzana, CA at the time he wrote the first Tarzan novel and named him after that city. If I am totally wrong please don't laugh. Heck, for all I know he may never have lived there at all. But it made for a good story that I bought. Smiley

That source you quoted is all screwed up time-wise. ERB bought extensive ranch property in California and named it Tarzana. Officially the area became named Tarzana for his creation of Tarzan in 1927. Here is the background on Tarzana...
Tarzana Ranch
On March 1, 1919, ERB purchased a 540 acre country estate in the San Fernando Valley in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains. He promptly christened the scenic, sprawling ranch, with its many hills and canyons, Tarzana. Plans were soon underway to make the ranch self sufficient by raising goats, Berkshire hogs, dairy cattle and chickens. Next would come a golf course, swimming pool, tennis court, ballroom, movie theatre, movie location facilities, zoo, and riding stables. ERB and Emma -- and the kids -- Joan, Hulbert, and Jack -- took immediately to the invigorating outdoor living and enjoyed many happy days at Tarzana Ranch. Later, after many farming failures, ERB, the jaded Gentleman Farmer, subdivided most of the property and created the town Tarzana.

I don't know if the following answers Smileys question or not:
(Editor's Note: What originally followed at this point was a short article that quoted extensively from Jungle Tales of Tarzan and showed the process that Burroughs used to create the language of the great apes. It confirms what the Crimson Collector suggests above, that Tarzan was "white skin" in the language of the great apes.
Since the article is under copyright, we have not reproduced it here.)

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