Also Jacko. [a. F. jocko, erroneously made by Buffon out of engeco, properly ncheko, the native name of the chimpanzee in the Gaboon country, West Africa.] The chimpanzee; sometimes used as a familiar name for any ape (perh. influenced by Jack or Jackanapes).
[1625. Battel, Angola, in Pinkerton’s Voy., XVI. 332. The largest of them is called Pongo in their language, and the other Engeco.
1766. Buffon, Hist. Naturelle (1837), III. 590. Jocko, Enjocko, nom de cet animal a Congo, et que nous avons adopté. En est l’article que nous avons retranché.]
1847. Savage, in Boston Jrnl. Nat. Hist., V. 422. Their local name for the Chimpanzee is Enche-eko, as near as it can be anglicised, from which the common term Jocko probably comes.
[1861. Du Chaillu, Equat. Africa, xx. 359. In the Gaboon country the Chimpanzee is called Nshiego, in the interior it is known as the Ncheko. Ibid., 362. The Chimpanzee is called Engeco by Battel, 1625;… Enjocko, Jocko, by Buffon, 1766; Inchego, by Bowdich, 1819; Enche-eco, by Savage, in 1847; Ntchego, by Franquet, in 1852; Nchego, by Aubry Lecomte, 1854–57: most of which are variations again of the Camma name, which, according to our English mode of spelling, should be, as I have given it, Nshiego … the negro name for the true Chimpanzee.]
1863. Huxley, Man’s Place Nat., i. 14. Thus it was that Andrew Battell’s ‘Engeco’ became metamorphosed into ‘Jocko,’ and, in the latter shape, was spread all over the world, in consequence of the extensive popularity of Buffon’s works.
