Someone forwarded me this;
Talking Turkey: The Story of How the Unofficial Bird of the
United States Got Named After a Middle Eastern Country
(by Giancarlo
Casale)
> How did the
turkey get its name? This seemingly harmless
> question popped into
my head one morning as I realized that the
> holidays were once
again upon us. After all, I thought, there's
> nothing more American
than a turkey. Their meat saved the pilgrims
> from starvation
during their first winter in New England. Out of
> gratitude, if you
can call it that, we eat them for Thanksgiving
> dinner, and again
at Christmas, and gobble them up in sandwiches all
> year long.
Every fourth grader can tell you that Benjamin Franklin
> was
particularly fond of the wild turkey, and even campaigned to
> make
it, and not the bald eagle, the national symbol. So how did
> such a
creature end up taking its name from a medium sized country
> in the
Middle East? Was it just a coincidence? I
wondered.
>
> The next day
I mentioned my musings to my landlord, whose wife
> is from Brazil.
"That's funny," he said, "In Portuguese the word for
> turkey is 'peru.'
Same bird, different country."
Hmm.
>
> With my curiosity
piqued, I decided to go straight to the
> source. That very
afternoon I found myself a Turk and asked him how
> to say turkey in
Turkish. "Turkey?" he said. "Well, we call
> turkeys 'hindi,' which
means, you know, from India." India? This was
> getting
weird.
>
> I spent the
next few days finding out the word for turkey in
> as many languages
as I could think of, and the more I found out, the
> weirder things
got. In Arabic, for instance, the word for turkey
> is "Ethiopian
bird," while in Greek it is "gallapoula" or "French
> girl." The
Persians, meanwhile, call them "buchalamun" which means,
>
appropriately enough,
"chameleon."
>
> In
Italian, on the other hand, the word for turkey
> is "tacchino"
which, my Italian relatives assured me, means nothing
> but the
bird. "But," they added, "it reminds us of something else.
> In
Italy we call corn, which as everybody knows comes from
> America,
'grano turco,' or 'Turkish grain.'" So here we were back to
> Turkey
again! And as if things weren't already confusing enough, a
> further
consultation with my Turkish informant revealed that the
> Turks
call corn "misir" which is also their word for
Egypt!
>
> By this point,
things were clearly getting out of hand. But I
> persevered
nonetheless, and just as I was about to give up hope, a
> pattern
finally seemed to emerge from this bewildering labyrinth. In
>
French, it turns out, the word for turkey is "dinde," meaning
"from
> India," just like in Turkish. The words in both German and
Russian
> had similar meanings, so I was clearly on to something.
The key, I
> reasoned, was to find out what turkeys are called in
India, so I
> called up my high school friend's wife, who is from an
old Bengali
> family, and popped her the
question.
>
> "Oh," she
said, "We don't have turkeys in India. They come
> from America.
Everybody knows that."
>
>
"Yes," I insisted, "but what do you call
them?"
> "Well, we don't have
them!" she said. She wasn't being very
> helpful. Still, I
persisted:
>
> "Look, you
must have a word for them. Say you were watching an
> American movie
translated from English and the actors were all
> talking about
turkeys. What would they
say?"
>
> "Well...I
suppose in that case they would just say the
> American word,
'turkey.' Like I said, we don't have
them."
> So there I was, at a
dead end. I began to realize only too
> late that I had unwittingly
stumbled upon a problem whose solution
> lay far beyond the capacity
of my own limited resources. Obviously I
> needed serious
professional assistance. So the next morning I
> scheduled an
appointment with Prof. inasi Tekin of Harvard
> University, a
world-renowned philologist and expert on Turkic
> languages. If
anyone could help me, I figured it would be Professor
>
Tekin.
>
> As I walked
into his office on the following Tuesday, I knew I
> would not be
disappointed. Prof. Tekin had a wizened, grandfatherly
> face, a
white, bushy, knowledgeable beard, and was surrounded by
> stack
upon stack of just the sort of hefty, authoritative books
> which
were sure to contain a solution to my vexing Turkish mystery.
> I
introduced myself, sat down, and eagerly awaited a dose of Prof.
>
Tekin's erudition.
>
>
"You see," he said, "In the Turkish countryside there is a
> kind of
bird, which is called a ulluk. It looks like a turkey but
> it is
much smaller, and its meat is very delicious. Long before the
>
discovery of America, English merchants had already discovered the
>
delicious ulluk, and began exporting it back to England, where it
>
became very popular, and was known as a 'Turkey bird' or simply
> a
'turkey.' Then, when the English came to America, they mistook the
>
birds here for ulluks, and so they began calling them 'turkey"
>
also. But other peoples weren't so easily fooled. They knew that
> these
new birds came from America, and so they called them things
> like
'India birds,' 'Peruvian birds,' or 'Ethiopian birds.' You
> see,
'India,' 'Peru' and 'Ethiopia' were all common names for the
> New
World in the early centuries, both because people had a hazier
>
understanding of geography, and because it took a while for the
>
name 'America' to catch
on.
>
> "Anyway, since
that time Americans have begun exporting their
> birds everywhere,
and even in Turkey people have started eating
> them, and have
forgotten all about their delicious ulluk. This is a
> shame,
because ulluk meat is really much, much
tastier."
>
> Prof. Tekin
seemed genuinely sad as he explained all this to
> me. I did my best
to comfort him, and tried to express my regret at
> hearing of the
unfairly cruel fate of the delicious ulluk. Deep
> down, however, I
was ecstatic. I finally had a solution to this
> holiday problem,
and knew I would be able once again to enjoy the
> main course of my
traditional Thanksgiving dinner without
>
reservation.
>
> Now if I
could just figure out why they call those little
> teeny dogs
Chihuahuas....
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