To Cuckoo or Not to Coo Coo?

It would be an interesting exploration through the art work and literature of the last few centuries to see which clock appears more frequently : the grandfather or the cuckoo.

My eyes are naturally more drawn to all the places the cuckoo lands, but upon arrival, I realize : what will it be called?

Naturally in the land of its origin, the cuckoo clock is a kuckucksuhr. The clock, created in the Black Forest of Germany, has bellows that are designed to mimic the monotonous call of the common cuckoo bird, indigenous to Eurasia and Africa. The Kuckucksuhr design has a bird figure emerge from a door to call in time with the half and hours.

But why choose a cuckoo, amongst all the birds of the temperate forests? Cuckoos are certainly abundant across these lands and their call is distinct and somewhat constant. The birds are termed parasitic nesters, because they deposit their eggs in the nests of other types, to be cared for by different birds.

The Latin word for cuckoo is cuculus and thus arrived in Middle English, Cucu, by way of the French, who also termed the bird after the sound it makes. But off it flew again to the American shores where, somewhat phonetically, the written term coo coo came into use to describe the weight driven wall clock. (There are no common cuckoo birds here, only a few, smaller varieties to our south).

No one would argue that the clock intentionally makes a coo-ing to sound to mimic the bird but more generally, modern culture seems to make all birds that don't "tweet," "coo" so perhaps we had best use the actual, proper word, cuckoo to acknowledge and celebrate the origin of the clock.