Did Cpt Kirt get his name from Cpt Cook?

Or is it a coincidence (which I am always highly suspect) or just my tiki - Hawaiian perception?

No, it was from this guy.
Don't you remember the aliens from Frankenberry or the Boo-berries?

I'm not a trekkie by any means, but I believe the original idea of star trek had captn kirk as a secondary character. the original first episode had a different captain; and kirk was a side guy. test viewings of the first episode showed the audience didn't like the main guy becuase they considered him "cold" and they liked the goofy william shatner better. so they re-worked the original episode, turned the original captin into a quadriplegic, added some new footage, and voila.

I used to own the reworked original, but gave it away a while ago; all of this is from my memory which is not always 100%.

this would tend to dis-count any captn cook-captn kirk connection, since he was intended to be a side character only.

There's a section on that exact topic in a new book about Capt Cook and his travels by Tony Horwitz. Blue Lattitudes it's called.

The book describes it as being the case, and contrasts how similar what they did was.

A interesting read to be sure.

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=5559&forum=6