The acoustic roots of the moniker trace back to 1968, when publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux released Tikki Tikki Tembo, an American children's picture book written by Arlene Mosel and illustrated by Blair Lent. The story recounted a purported Chinese folk tale about a firstborn son carrying an impossibly long ceremonial name: "Tikki tikki tembo-no sa rembo-chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo." The cadence embedded itself into the subconscious of several generations of schoolkids.
Over the decades, educators and cultural scholars pointed out that the book had little to do with authentic Chinese folklore, mixing cultural traditions haphazardly. Yet the bouncing rhythm of the title phrase remained an indelible pop-culture earworm. When twenty-something and thirty-something consumers encountered playful highballs on modern bar menus, the subconscious linguistic echo clicked immediately. A patron ordering a tropical Tom Collins casually truncated the drink into "Tiki Tiki Tom," and the name stuck.
