[redshawk]

Snips from WikiLeaks. ....:-D

Gojira is a portmanteau of the Japanese words: gorira ( “gorilla”) and kujira ( “whale”), owing to the fact that in one planning stage, Godzilla was described as “a cross between a gorilla and a whale”, Godzilla’s name was written in ateji as Gojira , where the kanji are used for phonetic value and not for meaning.

The Japanese pronunciation of the name is the Anglicized form is /ɡɒdˈzɪlə/, with the first syllable pronounced like the word “god” and the rest rhyming with “gorilla”.

In the Hepburn romanization system, Godzilla’s name is rendered as “Gojira”, whereas in the Kunrei romanization system it is rendered as “Gozira”. During the development of the American version of Godzilla Raids Again (1955), Godzilla’s name was changed to “Gigantis”, a move initiated by producer Paul Schreibman, who wanted to create a character distinct from Godzilla.[34

[redshawk]

Original movie trailer. ..

Raymond Burr. ..
https://youtu.be/VKrj1ymJzmo

[Olog-hai]

I watched All Monsters Attack a couple of weeks ago on TCM, which was interesting since the kaijū sequences appeared only in the dreams of a young boy named Ichiro. (Minilla speaks in this one.)

[Olog-hai]

Gojira is a portmanteau of the Japanese words: gorira ( “gorilla”) and kujira ( “whale”), owing to the fact that in one planning stage, Godzilla was described as “a cross between a gorilla and a whale”, Godzilla’s name was written in ateji as Gojira , where the kanji are used for phonetic value and not for meaning. …

Ateji?

There is no kanji (Chinese character) that’s used in Japanese for “gorilla” AFAIK; it's all in katakana (ゴリラ), just as the name Gojira is written in katakana (ゴジラ).

Ateji refers to writing everything in Chinese characters and applying a reading to them that has nothing to do with the customary readings but instead indicates the suggested meaning, such as with “Yamato” (大和, which by sight should be read “Dai-wa”). There sure is no phonetic reading there.

But this is Wikipedia after all.