turkey

Quite improbably, I'm learning Turkish. Indirectly, that's why I started thinking about the word "turkey". I would have guessed that the bird turkey and the country Turkey are only incidentally related, but it turns out that's not true.

According to Wikipedia, when British colonists first came to America they mistook the native bird for guinea fowls. The guinea fowl came to Europe from Madagascar via Turkey. Apparently, this led to people calling them something like the Turkey cock or the Turkey hen, and eventually just turkeys. The turkeys we know here, though, originate in Mexico. The wild version may look like the domesticated kind, but having run across a wild version in the streets of San Rafael, where my sister lives, they seem very powerful creatures. Big, too.  In fact, I just pulled back from the fog of memory that I did a blog post about a great documentary on a man who lived with turkeys. You can find my post about it HERE.

And here are some fun facts you can learn about turkeys, over at British Turkey. Now, one of the things that comes up there as well as at the Online Etymology Dictionary is that turkey soon made its way into British fare, even as early as the 1530s. I hadn't really thought about this before, but it had to be a luxury item, at least initially, coming as it did all the way from America. And yet, by 1575, it was standard fare for Christmas dinner, pricey or not. I seemed to remember that the subject of turkey came up in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, which was why it was particularly gratifying to find this post at realbook.com on the subject of Dickens' A Christmas Carol and the Question of Turkey or Goose.

The turkey is an ancient bird of the Americas. I'm happy to include here a video about the Turkey Dance from the Caddo people of the region now known as Oklahoma. I think as Americans, we tend to think of turkeys as just dumb luckless food, but they have inspired the oldest dance on this continent and perhaps we should find a new appreciation for the bird.

Dickens' A Christmas Carol and the Question of Turkey or Goose - See more at: http://realbook.com/article/dickens-christmas-carol-and-question-turkey-or-goose#sthash.bodrGHVs.dpuf

Dickens' A Christmas Carol and the Question of Turkey or Goose - See more at: http://realbook.com/article/dickens-christmas-carol-and-question-turkey-or-goose#sthash.bodrGHVs.dpuf

And here's a link to a site about Caddo dance in general.

The real reason I got into all this, though? It was because I was surprised by the name for turkey in Turkey.

It's hindi. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary:

The Turkish name for it is hindi, literally "Indian," probably influenced by Middle French dinde (c. 1600, contracted from poulet d'inde, literally "chicken from India," Modern French dindon), based on the then-common misconception that the New World was eastern Asia. 

When it comes to turkeys, no one's taking credit, apparently. But maybe it's high time they should.