The French explorer François Leguat was the first to refer to the bird as the "solitaire" (referring to its solitary habits), but it has been suggested that he borrowed the name from a 1689 tract by his sponsor Marquis Henri Duquesne, which used the name "solitaire" in reference to the Réunion ibis. The bird was first scientifically named in 1789 as a species of dodo ("Didus solitarius", based on Leguat's description) by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in the thirteenth edition of "Systema Naturae". In 1786, subfossil Rodrigues solitaire bones encrusted in stalagmite were discovered in a cave and sent to the French naturalist Georges Cuvier in about 1830. For unknown reasons, he stated they had recently been found on Mauritius, which caused confusion, until they were compared with other bones from Rodrigues that were found to belong to the same species.