User talk:Hadji75

Eurasian collared dove
Hi, I've undone your good faith edit to this. Jobling, the reliable source refrencing it, says Latin, and I think that is right. deca is a combinational form of decem, and variations on octodecim appear to be acceptable alternatives to duodeviginti. OED has octodecimo as post-classical Latin derived,.

The Latin word may itself be derived from Greek, but that's a completely different issue, and not mentioned by Jobling (who normally does follow back) or OED (which always does). If you have a source to support your etymology for this bird, perhaps we can continue the discussion here, rather than on the article page.

cheers Jimfbleak - talk to me?  06:19, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

Dear Jimfbleak, I hope I am replying on the correct page!

The word "decaocto", meaning eighteen (literally "teneight" in a compound word) (ancient/mediaeval Greek δεκαοκτώ, modern Greek δεκαοκτὼ or δεκαοχτὼ" can be found in Liddell and Scot - see: http://stephanus.tlg.uci.edu/lsj/#eid=24664&context=lsj&action=from-search, which is a source far more reliable than Jobling or OED when it comes to ancient Greek. Their oldest occurrence in ancient Greek ligerature is from the Hellenistic period Cleonides' Εἰσαγωγὴ ἁρμονικὴ (ibid.).  Formerly, Greeks would normally write/say 18 as "ὀκτωκαίδεκα", literally meaning "eightandten" in one compound word - see 3rd line from Herodotus' Historiae Book VIII (Urania) in https://el.wikisource.org/wiki/%CE%99%CF%83%CF%84%CE%BF%CF%81%CE%AF%CE%B1%CE%B9_(%CE%97%CF%81%CE%BF%CE%B4%CF%8C%CF%84%CE%BF%CF%85)/%CE%9F%CF%85%CF%81%CE%B1%CE%BD%CE%AF%CE%B1.

Considering that a) the bird was native in Asia Minor, where Latin speakers were never predominant and appeared a millennium later than Greeks, and b) that the name is attributed to an ancient Greek rather than Latin mythology myth, I should think that the bird name as well as the word decaocto itself is originally Greek. Interestingly, the Greek origin of the word when referring to the sound/call it makes is stated as coming from Greek in the same Wikipedia article -be it without the unnecessary for those who understand Greek citation. That latter etymology was not written or edited by yours truly, I assure you.

By the way, the bird is called a "δεκαοχτούρα" in modern Greek, too, and a similar folk tale related to the origins of the name is still widely known.

All in all, it is most unlikely that decaocto was derived from octodecim(o)/octadecimo.

Cheers! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.87.97.44 (talk) 09:41, 27 July 2016 (UTC)