The story
- Malay · derived frombuah duku“fruit of the tree Lansium domesticum, langsat”
- English todaybaluku
Corruption of Malay buah duku (“fruit of the tree Lansium domesticum, langsat”), under influence from Hokkien phonology, in which [d] and [l] are in complementary distribution, compare 黎撩 (lê-liô) from radio and 鐳／镭 (lui, “money”) from Malay duit.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.