"Turkey" I think It's the time to give this bird the real name away from geography? why one of North America's most celebrated birds came to be named after a distant nation all one has to do is look a

Emir

"Turkey" I think It's the time to give this bird the real name away from geography? why one of North America's most celebrated birds came to be named after a distant nation all one has to do is look at the history of global commerce and considering the name of the bird in most other languages has nothing to do with geography.It's an interesting idea of giving a name to bird and I would like to discuss it here.

Nov 27, 2015 11:29 AM

Corrections · 6

The cartoon is great.

I looked up "Turkey" in an etymological dictionary and this is the entry:

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=turkey&allowed_in_frame=0

So, to summarise it: There was a big bird on Madagascar that had a comparable stature, but was a different species. And it was imported to Europe via Turkey. That is how it became associated with Turkey, even though it was orginally called something else in English.

The American bird was brought to Europe later and people thought the two were related or even identical, so the new bird from the Americas became associated with Turkey too.

December 2, 2015

@Wafa It's called Turkey because when Europeans first encountered turkeys in America, they incorrectly identified the birds as a type members of a group of birds which were thought to typically come from the country of Turkey

December 2, 2015