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André Du Nay appears as the author of one book, The Origins of the Rumanians: The Early History of the Rumanian Language, Toronto; Buffalo: Matthias Corvinus Pub. reviewed here on a respectable website.

I have not yet read the book, but it contains this note:

An earlier version of this book appeared in 1977 as Edward Sapir Monograph No. 3, published by Jupiter Press, Lake Bluff, IL, (ISBN 0–933104–03–0, Library of Congress No. 79–115770).

It also contains thanks to, and a preface by Adam Makkai, Professor of Linguistics, University of Illinois at Chicago, a native Hungarian.

”André Du Nay” sounded a bit odd to me, I thought maybe it is a pseudonym. But I wasn't able to find anything more, not even about the academic status and carrier of this author.

Is there a chance to find more about him?

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    Library of Congress states " André Du Nay, pseud. of a prominent European scholar of the Rumanian language)". VIAF lists potentially other works OUP lists a preface by "Keith Hitchens" also of U. Illinois. That's two associations with U. Illinois; could that potentially be a clue?
    – MCW ♦
    Commented Apr 7, 2023 at 12:02
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    @MCW - Hitchens of U.I. is the author of a review linked in my Q. (The English Historical Review, Volume 115, Issue 460, February 2000, Page 169). I have found the other books, I will add details in an update to the Q.
    – cipricus
    Commented Apr 7, 2023 at 13:29
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    @MCW - The name seems a pseudonym associated to other names under which the title Transylvania and the Rumanians: Transylvania - fiction and reality : the Daco-Roman legend was published, available online here. The website has the name of the initial publishing house, and seems to promote , al least up to a point, a Hungarian nationalist agenda. (Although the initial book may still prove interesting to me, it probably lacks academic authority.)
    – cipricus
    Commented Apr 7, 2023 at 13:57
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    @MCW - Incredibly, the preface by the linguist Adam Makkai seems to have nothing to do with the topic of the book: it is a small article (or pages of a book) on American English, while the book is about Romanian history and old history of Romanian language. This stinks.
    – cipricus
    Commented Apr 7, 2023 at 14:24

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Based in part on links posted in comment by @MCW:

  • The name André Du Nay appears on the cover of this book: Transylvania and the Rumanians , along another two other names: Alain du Nay and Arpad Kozstin.

  • But this is the same book as the one here, called The Daco-Roman Legend. The website index page displays a similar name to that of the initial publishing house ("Corvinus"), and seems to promote, at least up to a point, a Hungarian patriotic and nationalist agenda, and some far-right topics like "decline of Europe" - although many links there lead nowhere.

  • Amazon also lists here this longer title: Transylvania and the Rumanians: Transylvania - fiction and reality : the Daco-Roman legend, by the same three authors. -

  • Alain du Nay seems to be the "main author" of that book - as it appears alone here

  • Arpad Kozstin appears here, online as the author of the The Daco-Roman Legend.

  • There seems to be another book under the name Alain du Nay, in Romanian: Români și maghiari în vârtejul istoriei. ("Romanians and Hungarians in the Vortex of History"), linked here and downloadable as pdf.

  • The preface by the linguist Adam Makkai seems to have nothing to do with the topic of the book: it is a small article (or pages of a book) on American English, without the slightest connection with the book itself, which is about Romanian history and old history of Romanian language. All that is very dubious.

As said (in Romanian) at that link of Wikipedia discussion page:

"Alain DU NAY does not exist. DU NAY is a pseudonym (from Danube, of the Danube) used for the publication of several "true history" books, for the "education" of Transylvanian Romanians" ---and of the general public, one could add.

That might very well be an accurate assessment of this case, and a good answer for the above question.

Using a series of pseudonyms, this seems to be a semi-amateurish cultural initiative of vulgarization of the nationalist or "official" Hungarian historiography position on Transylvania against the Romanian one (nationalistic as that may be).

The scientific value of these publications is dubious. (Even potentially useful or interesting information - like that on the connection between Romanian and Albanian languages and its historical context - is not treated objectively, but uncritically instrumentalized for the sake of a cultural militancy of sorts.)

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