Earliest real refs I have are in the 1965 TI and 1966
Fairchild catalogs, both
list JK flip-flop ICs.
They both list JK types in the early RTL families, amongst others.
I suspect the name was fairly well-established by that point. The HP9100,
which came out about a year afterwards, and which used discrete
transsitors, contains 2 PCBs of flip-flops. Each PCB cotnains 20 JK
flip-flops (and a little clock control circuitry), they are essentially
master-slave JK flip-flops built from 4 transistors.
The transistors are labelled in the etch of the PCB 'J', 'K', 'E',
'F'.
The 'J' and 'K' transitors are for the input flip-flop (and thus,
presumabluy, conrrespond to the J and K inputs). The 'E' and 'F'
transistors
are for the output flip-flop, why they have those names and not, say 'Q'
and something-else I don't know.
Alas since the only info on the intenrals of the 9100 is that obtained by
lookibng at the machine, I doubt I'll ever work out why 'E' and 'F'
-tony