Meaning

noun (sometimes used ironically) a man of great strength and agility (after the hero of a series of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs)

noun a man raised by apes who was the hero of a series of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs

originCoined by Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1912. A name created by Burroughs for his fiction. In the fictional ape language of the books, "tarzan" means "white-skin"; possibly echoic in its phonetics of various "exotic" names (see Orientalism).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0