The Dutch geographer Olfert Dapper knew of it in the 17th century.

At the time, Ferry was dating French model Amanda Lear, who was photographed with a black jaguar for the front cover of the album (Ferry appears on the back cover as a dapper chauffeur standing in front of a limousine).

Small casts and smaller budgets required expedients such as that described by the reviewer George Odell, writing of an 1821 performance of "Richard III": "A dapper, wooly haired waiter at the City Hotel personated the royal Plantagenet in robes made up from discarded merino curtains of the ballroom.

The scholar Laura V. Blanchard identifies Odell's "dapper waiter" as the actor James Hewlett.

O. Dapper writing in 1668 (also drawing from Blommaert) explains that by that date Samson had been driven out by "those of Ambo" (Ambas Bay) and Monneba had become the lead trader in the region: Dapper also describes Monneba's people: By this time, Dutch trade on the Guinea coast had been regularised, and ships carried detailed instructions for reaching the various trading posts, including Monneba's Village.

Monneba himself was still thought to be the ruler there, as Bardot wrote in 1732 (probably using Dapper as the source): "The lands opposite to the latter places, on the north of Rio Camerones, are inhabited by the Calbonges, . . .

John Gotti – the "Dapper Don", and his celebrity family.)