Education | History
How The Turkey Got its Name
Ah, the Wild Turkey (Megeagris gallopavo), that old Thanksgiving favourite (the bird not the bourbon).
They’re one of the heaviest birds getting around that can still drag its sorry butt into the sky; and they’ve got no qualms about attacking people that get all up in their grill.
Yes, the Turkey is pretty fun. But did you ever stop to wonder how a North American bird ended up with the same name as a Middle Eastern country? You know … it’s probably a coincidence, right. I mean, there are plenty of words that are spelt the same but have different meanings and different linguistic origins.
Like a baseball bat and the disgusting, nocturnal flying rodent. Or like how the word second can either be the first loser or the thing that ticks and tocks. You can desert someone is a desert. You could shrink something into a minute version of itself, or maybe you’ll just duck out for a quick minute. The list goes on and on…
But that is not the case with our friend, the Turkey. To get to the truth of the matter, we’re going to have to go back to before the New World was even a twinkle in Cortés’ eye. In those bygone days, Turkish traders used to bring Guineafowl into Europe from Africa.
Over the years, the Guineafowl came to be associated with those traders and they were colloquially known as Turkeys. Now, when Europeans reached the Americas and came across these new scary birds, they decided they looked rather like the fowl they were more familiar with.
I don’t see it myself, but to be fair they are both game birds and members of the Order Galliformes. Over time, the American variant became the bird that everyone knew exclusively as the Turkey. So, mystery solved?
Except no. Not at all. This is where it starts to get weird.
Because, surely, they don’t call Turkeys ‘Turkey’ in Turkey. That would be silly. And they don’t. They call them hindi, as do the French dindi (Chicken from India). Because way back when, Columbus wasn’t great at geography and he called the Americas the West Indies. I mean … we still do, they have a cricket team and everything.
So I guess, that kinda makes sense, but then … what do they call Turkeys in India? Because if anyone has it straight, it has to be the Indians. Right? Nope, either they call them Turkeys too, or in some dialects it’s Piru or Peru, which again is not where they come from, but at least this time they’re in the right hemisphere. Apparently that came about because of how the Portuguese used to refer to the bird.
We’re on a real tour of the world here.
Okay, let’s back it up. This is one misleading bird. What if we turn to science and its taxonomic name: Meleagris gallopavo? Well, Meleagris is Latin for Guineafowl, so we’re right back where we started. Meanwhile, gallopavo is a portmanteau: gallo, which means Rooster; and pavo, which means Peacock. So, if we string it all together we end up with guineafowl-rooster-peacock. Which is great and all … if we wanted a list of everything it isn’t.
At this point, we come to realise that language has no inherent meaning. But maybe we should do what we should have done right from the start. What do the Native Americans call this bird? Well, it has a couple of different indigenous names, but my favourite is Omahksipi’kssii, which translates as ‘Big Bird’. And you know what, they ain’t wrong.
Meanwhile, there’s a second species of Turkey called the Ocellated Turkey, which for my money is the far fancier bird. But that’s probably a story for another time.
