{"id":7597,"date":"2020-11-26T12:18:36","date_gmt":"2020-11-26T12:18:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/?p=7597"},"modified":"2023-11-27T12:16:32","modified_gmt":"2023-11-27T12:16:32","slug":"the-greatest-thanksgiving-mystery-of-them-all-the-origins-of-the-turkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/the-greatest-thanksgiving-mystery-of-them-all-the-origins-of-the-turkey\/","title":{"rendered":"The Greatest Thanksgiving Mystery of Them All \u2013 The Origins of the Turkey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

One of the greatest mysteries to perplex the curious\nlanguage lover during a Thanksgiving dinner is the ubiquitous turkey itself.\nSome people call them \u201cTurkey\u201d, others call them \u201cIndia\u201d, \u201cPeru\u201d and some even\nknow them as \u201cRoman\u201d! Seriously, it\u2019s enough to get our feathers in a ruffle!\nWhat we call the turkey is a tangled linguistic and geographical mess. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One bird, so many names<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The turkey was brought over to the rest of the world from\nNorth America, of that there is no doubt. But look at its names in various\nlanguages. French speakers call this big, meaty bird dinde, derived from d\u2019Inde\n(meaning \u201cfrom India\u201d), Portuguese speakers say peru despite the fact that Peru\nis in South America, Malaysians call it ayam belanda (Dutch chicken) and Arabs\nrefer to it as the Roman chicken dik rumi (\u062f\u064a\u0643 \n\u0631\u0648\u0645\u064a)! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Turkish speakers call it hindi, from Hindistan,\nthe Turkish name for India! And that\u2019s not all. Polish speakers say indyk while\nRussians have the similar-sounding \u0438\u043d\u0434\u044e\u043a (indyuk) \u2013 both these words come from\n\u201cIndian\u201d. Basques have indioilarra, literally, \u201cIndia rooster\u201d and Castilian\nSpanish uses pavo, which was originally the Old Spanish word for \u201cpeacock\u201d! In\nSpanish-speaking countries, pavo became so pervasive as the word for \u201cturkey\u201d\nthat the original word for \u201cpeacock\u201d was replaced by pavo real (royal turkey)\ninstead!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Dutch refer to them as kalkoen and variants of this term\nare found throughout Scandinavia. Kalkoen comes from Calicut-hoen or \u201chen from\nCalicut\u201d \u2013 a city in Kerala in South India now known as Kozhikode. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

North American Origins<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First things first. When English explorers set foot in North America, they were of course intrigued by the sight of the strange heavy-set wild birds wandering about. The Englishmen of that period were already familiar with a vaguely similar-looking edible bird from Africa known as the \u201cturkey-cock\u201d \u2013 nowadays known as the guinea fowl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guinea fowl came from equatorial Africa but were introduced by Turkish merchants to Western Europe – hence the association with Turkey. The early English explorers In North America were quick to name the new species after the familiar turkey-cock, forever bestowing the name \u201cturkey\u201d upon an all-American bird!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do Indians call them?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

With so many languages referring to the turkey as \u201cIndian\u201d or even more specifically, naming them after the Indian city of Calicut \/ Kozhikode, what do Indians call this wattled, wrinkly-faced bird? In Hindi, a turkey is simply a tarki \u091f\u0930\u094d\u0915\u0940 while further south in Tamil Nadu the local name is vaankozhi \u0bb5\u0bbe\u0ba9\u0bcd\u0b95\u0bcb\u0bb4\u0bbf or \u201csky chicken\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other weird names<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Germans dispensed with the incorrect geographical names\naltogether and refer to them either as Pute or Truthahn perhaps in imitation of\nthe turkey\u2019s call. The Italian tacchino might also be of onomatopoeic origins\nas early Europeans took notice of the peculiar sounds these strange birds make.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Asia, some of the more creative names for the humble\nturkey include hu\u01d2 j\u012b \u706b\u9e21\n(literally, \u201cfire chicken\u201d) in Chinese and shichimench\u014d\u4e03\u9762\u9ce5 or \u201cseven-faced bird\u201d in Japanese.\nSimilarly, Koreans call it chilmyeonjo\uce60\uba74\uc870also meaning \u201cseven-faced bird\u201d perhaps\nin reference to the colourful wattles and skin flaps on their faces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A scientific name straight out of Greek mythology<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Finally, the turkey\u2019s scientific name Meleagris gallopavo is\njust as bizarre as the bird\u2019s other international monikers. Its first name\ncomes from Meleager, an ancient Greek warrior whose mourning sisters, upon his\ndeath, were transformed into guinea fowl by the goddess Artemis. The gallopavo\npart is a combination of the Latin words for \u201crooster\u201d and \u201cpeacock\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, there we have it, the poor turkey is a bird so\nmisunderstood that almost every name it has ever been given in scores of\nlanguages around the world points to some strange non-existent geographical\norigins. And to top it off, even its scientific name is a blend of the name of\na mythical Greek warrior and the word for \u201crooster-peacock\u201d!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the greatest mysteries to perplex the curious language lover during a Thanksgiving dinner is the ubiquitous turkey itself. Some people call them \u201cTurkey\u201d, others call them \u201cIndia\u201d, \u201cPeru\u201d and some even know them as \u201cRoman\u201d! Seriously, it\u2019s enough to get our feathers in a ruffle! What we call the turkey is a tangled … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[24],"tags":[1829,938,39],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7597"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7597"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9577,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7597\/revisions\/9577"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}