[Lexicog] back to turkey question

[Caner Onoglu]

Talking Turkey: "The Story of How the Unofficial Bird
of the United
States Got Named After a Middle Eastern Country"

 by Giancarlo Casale

 PhD in History & MES
 Dissertation topic: Ottoman-Portuguese Relations and
the Sixteenth
 Century Origins of Globalization
 Harvard University
 Center for Middle Eastern Studies
 Giancarlo Casale is one of the editors of the
"Harvard Middle Eastern and
 Islamic Review"

 How did the turkey get its name? This seemingly
harmless question popped
 into my head one morning as I realized that the
holidays were once again
 upon us. After all, I thought, there's nothing more
 American than a turkey. Their meat saved the pilgrims
from starvation
during
 their first winter in New England. Out of gratitude,
if you can call it
 that, we eat them for Thanksgiving dinner, and again
at Christmas, and
 gobble them up in sandwiches all year long. Every
fourth grade! r can tell
 you that Benjamin Franklin was particularly fond of
the wild turkey, and
 even campaigned to make it, and not the bald eagle,
the national symbol.
So
 how did such a creature end up taking its name from a
medium sized country
 in the Middle East? Was it just a coincidence? I
wondered.

 The next day I mentioned my musings to my landlord,
whose wife is from
 Brazil. "That's funny," he said, "In Portuguese the
word for turkey is
 `peru.' Same bird, different country." Hmm.

 With my curiosity piqued, I decided to go straight to
the source. That
very
 afternoon I found myself a Turk and asked him how to
say turkey in
Turkish.
 "Turkey?" he said. "Well, we call turkeys `hindi,'
which means, you know,
 from India." India? This was getting weird.

 I spent the next few days finding out the word for
turkey in as many
 languages as I could think of, and the more I foun! d
out, the weirder
 things got. In Arabic, for instance, the word for
turkey is "Ethiopian
 bird," while in Greek it is "gallapoula" or "French
girl." The Persians,
 meanwhile, call them "buchalamun" which means,
appropriately enough,
 "chameleon." In Italian, on the other hand, the word
for turkey is
 "tacchino" which, my Italian relatives assured me,
means nothing but the
 bird. "But," they added, "it reminds us of something
else. In Italy we
call
 corn, which as everybody knows comes from America,
`grano turco,' or
 `Turkish grain.'" So here we were back to Turkey
again! And as if things
 weren't already confusing enough, a further
consultation with my Turkish
 informant revealed that the Turks call corn "misir"
which is also their
word
 for Egypt!

 By this point, things were clearly getting out of
hand. But I persevered
 nonetheless, and just as I was about to give up hope,
a pattern finally
 seemed to emerge from this bewildering labyrinth. In
French, it turns out,
 the word for turkey is "dinde," meaning "from India,"
just like in
Turkish.
 The words in both German and Russian had similar
meanings, so I was
clearly on to something. The key, I reasoned, was to
find out what turkeys are
 called in India, so I called up my high school
friend's wife, who is from
an old Bengali family, and popped her the question.

 "Oh," she said, "We don't have turkeys in India. They
come from America.
 Everybody knows that."

 "Yes," I insisted, "but what do you call them?"

 "Well, we don't have them!" she said. She wasn't
being very helpful.

 Still, I persisted:

 "Look, you must have a word for them. Say you were
watching an

 American movie translated from English and the actors
were all talking
about turkeys. What would they say?"

 "Well...I suppose in that case they would just say
the American word,
 `turkey.' Like I said, we don't have them."

 So there I was, at a dead end. I began to realize
only too late that I had
 unwittingly stumbled upon a problem whose solution
lay far beyond the
 capacity of my own limited resources. Obviously I
needed
 serious professional assistance. So the next morning
I scheduled an
 appointment with Prof. *inasi Tekin of Harvard
University, a
world-renowned
 philologist and expert on Turkic languages. If anyone
could help me, I
 figured it would be Professor Tekin.

 As I walked into his office on the following Tuesday,
I knew I would not
be disappointed. Prof. Tekin had a wizened,
grandfatherly face, a white,
bushy, knowledgeable beard, and was surrounded by
stack
 upon stack of just the sort of hefty, authoritative
books which were sure
to contain a solution to m! y vexing Turkish mystery.
I introduced myself,
sat down, and eagerly awaited a dose of Prof. Tekin's
erudition.

 "You see," he said, "In the Turkish countryside there
is a kind of bird,
 which is called a gulluk. It looks like a turkey but
it is much smaller,
and its meat is very delicious. Long before the
discovery of America, English
 merchants had already discovered the delicious
gulluk, and began exporting
 it back to England, where it became very popular, and
was known as a
`Turkey bird' or simply a `turkey.' Then, when the
English came to America, they
 mistook the birds here for gulluks, and so they began
calling them
`turkey" also. But other peoples weren't so easily
fooled. They knew that these new
 birds came from America, and so they called them
things like `India
birds,'
 `Peruvian birds,' or `Ethiopian birds.' You
 see, `India,' `Peru' and `Ethiopia' were all common
names ! for the New
 World in the early centuries, both because people had
a hazier
understanding of geography, and because it took a
while for the
 name `America' to catch on.

 "Anyway, since that time Americans have begun
exporting their birds
 everywhere, and even in Turkey people have started
eating them, and have
 forgotten all about their delicious gulluk. This is a
shame,
 because gulluk meat is really much, much tastier."

 Prof. Tekin seemed genuinely sad as he explained all
this to me. I did my
 best to comfort him, and tried to express my regret
at hearing of the
 unfairly cruel fate of the delicious gulluk. Deep
down, however, I was
 ecstatic. I finally had a solution to this holiday
problem, and knew I
would be able once again to enjoy the main course of
my traditional Thanksgiving
 dinner without reservation.

 Now if I could just figure out why they call ! those
little teeny dogs
 Chihuahuas...
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