Diederik or Dideric? (1 Viewer)

[T.O.]

I don't see anything explicit to this effect in Levaillant 1806. The only thing I find is :

In this text, he explains the reason for the change (Didric is better because it expresses the bird's voice; Buffon's name expesses characters that are not unique to this species), but not the source of the name he chose (who coined it, where he took it from).
In 1790, he stated explicitly "je l'avois nommé le Didiric" -- I had named it the Didric.
("Nommer" in French can admittedly also be used in the sense of "calling by a name", rather than "giving a name to"; but the fact that Levaillant used a past tense in this sentence, while obviously calling the bird by this name at the same time, doesn't seem compatible with interpretating it this way here.)

Given that Didric is the French version of Diederik, it makes sense he wrote it that way in his description. As the boers had arrived long before 1806 it is most logical that Diederik is the original name

 

[l_raty]

Given that Didric is the French version of Diederik, it makes sense he wrote it that way in his description. As the boers had arrived long before 1806 it is most logical that Diederik is the original name

Well, given that Diederik exists as a Dutch name, it also makes sense that Dutch speakers would have written it that way if they adopted it from Levaillant. The fact that the Boers were there before Levaillant's travels is no evidence that they called the cuckoo by that name back then.
(Besides, "Didric" as a French version of Diederik, although it does appear to have been used at times, is actually so rare that I don't think it can be reasonably expected from a French speaker to be aware of its existence. The standard "French version" of Diederik is Thierry.)

I have so far failed to find any instance of the word "Diederik" in connection to the cuckoo in any pre-1900 publication. I do find "Didric", often cited from Levaillant, in many places (starting with Latham 1801 : Supplement II to the General synopsis of birds - Biodiversity Heritage Library), including in some Dutch publications (Handleiding tot de beoefening der dierkunde, De dierentuin van het Koninklijk Zoölogisch Genootschap Natura Artis Magistra te Amsterdam).

 

[Xenospiza]

What is a bit intriguing is that François Levaillant, in 1790, claimed he had coined the name himself from the call -- writing it, indeed, 'didric' -

Did the Cape Dutch/Boer name arise independently, or was it originally a Dutchization of Levaillant's French name ?

Funnily, Plaintive Cuckoo is called "Piet-van-vliet" (for English-speakers: pronounced "Pete-vawn-Vleet") in Dutch, which is also a (common) Dutch name.

Maybe Levaillant was a bit disingenuous here. Would a Frenchman come up with "didric" when listening to that call? Or maybe there was a Diederik in his team (like Klaas!) and this is a private joke by Levaillant.

 

[Paul Clapham]

For what it's worth, the IOC "Multilingual Version" spreadsheet has "Diederikkie" as the Afrikaans name for this species.