Talking turkey (or are we )

Q. So, the turkey. What's the mystery

A. To answer your question with a question, where, given the name, do you think turkeys might have originated

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Q. Turkey

A. Wrong.

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Q. Obviously. Somewhere near Turkey

A. No. Right around the other side of the world in Central America, specifically what is now Mexico and the southern half of the USA.

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Q. So why are they called turkeys

A. Domestication of the common turkey was probably begun by the Indians of Pre-Columbian Mexico. First brought to Europe by the Spanish about 1519, and they soon spread throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. They reached England in 1541, brought by merchants trading in the Levant. Because the eastern Mediterranean was all under the sway of the Turkish Empire, these merchants were known as 'Turkey merchants' and the new birds they brought to the English table were called 'turkey birds' or 'turkey cocks'

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Curiously, the English seem to have been the only nation to make this particular error.

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Q. What does everyone else call them, then

A. America at the time was known as the Indies, and consequently a lot of European languages, as well as others like Arabic and Hebrew, called it something like the 'bird of India' (viz. French dinde, from�d'Inde, 'from India'). However, a few languages got it wrong in a different way, including Danish, Dutch, German, Finnish and Norwegian, in which the bird was named after Calicut (German Calecutishe Hahn, Dutch kalkoense hahn, Danish kalkun), which is a seaport on the Malabar coast of the modern state of Kerala in India.

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Q. Why

A. Good question, given that the turkey didn't reach India until a century or so after its introduction to Europe. It might have something to do with an erroneous association of the voyage of Vasco da Gama to Calicut via the Cape of Good Hope at the turn of the 16th century with the Spanish expeditions to the new Indies and the introduction of the turkey some 20 or so years later.

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Q. But isn't there a further complication about the name

A. Indeed. At roughly the same time these very Turkey merchants reintroduced the guinea fowl - a native of West Africa - to England, where it had last been seen during the Roman occupation over 1,000 years earlier. And, you've probably guessed it, the guinea fowl was also called the turkey bird for a while.

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If that wasn't enough, then the Latin term for the turkey, meleagris, will put the cherry on the cake.

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Can you guess why

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Q. It was the Roman name for...

A. ... Give up The guinea fowl.

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Q. How come it's the traditional Thanksgiving food The settlers were in New England not Mexico, surely

Because, in a curious twist in the tale, the domestic turkey was re-introduced into North America from Britain, having been taken there by the colonists - who were, to say the least, somewhat surprised to find it living there in the wild.

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The custom of eating turkey at Thanksgiving originated in the autumn of 1621 when the governor of Plymouth, Massachusetts, William Bradford, invited neighbouring Indians to join the Pilgrims for a three-day festival of recreation and feasting in gratitude for the bounty of the season. It was officially proclaimed as a national holiday by Abraham Lincoln in 1863.

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See also the answerbank articles on the naming of America and lingua franca

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For more on Phrases & Sayings click here

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By Simon Smith