Why is the movie called 'The Karate Kid' when the kid learns Kung Fu?

Answer 1

As a tribute to an older movie with the same title and almost identical plot where the kid did learn karate.

It would appear that the primary reason would be as a marketing ploy. Many of the parents today remember the movie "Karate Kid" and will be interested in seeing the remake with their children. The title "Kung Fu Kid" would not garner the same attention.

It should also be noted that the term "Karate" is quite often used as a generic term to refer to all forms of unarmed combat. The fact is that the word "Karate" was originally applied to Chinese hand fighting. In Okinawa, the term "te" was used to denote unarmed "hand" fighting. It is believed that the self defense skills of China migrated to Okinawa where they refined it into their own art. To identify the earlier Chinese version, the term "Kara" referred to anything of ancient times in China, particularly the T'ang Dynasty. Therefore, Kara-te was translated as "Chinese hand" or "T'ang hand," and includes the Chinese Kung Fu.

It wasn't until many years later that the term Karate had become so widely applied to any unarmed combat throughout Japan that Martial Artists felt there needed to be a distinction. Therefore, renowned Shotokan Karate Master, Gichen Funakoshi, suggested a change of the spelling in Chinese characters to use a synonym that was pronounced the same, but where "Kara" meant "empty." Thus "Karate-do" ("way of empty hand) was used in Japan to denote their native art, although the English writing of Karate has been used in many countries as a general term for all systems of Martial Art. Tansudo (or Tang Soo Do) is another term that means the same thing, and refers to Chinese boxing, or the fist fighting of the ancient T'ang Dynasty.