zeezoutenijs:somethingsomethingbutterfly:elodieunderglass:tuulikki:mapsontheweb:The crazy origins of
zeezoutenijs:somethingsomethingbutterfly:elodieunderglass:tuulikki:mapsontheweb:The crazy origins of the word ‘turkey’ in various European languages.@elodieunderglass, in case you haven’t seen this!Thank you so much, I adore it! The etymology of “turkey” is a delight to me. If you click through to the picture you can see a very short potted version.Here’s the long one, since I have it already: bird we call “turkey,” Meleagris gallopavo, is only native to the Americas. Turkeys were later imported to various countries in Europe as the transatlantic trade routes became established. Those routes are far older than you’d think.In England, turkeys were imported via Africa, which confused the English. They knew the birds were exotic, and perceived them as coming from far away, so they lumped them in with other exotic fowls that they referred to as coming from Turkey. They referred to them as “Turkey cocks” and “Turkey hens,” probably as a general term, along with other unusual pheasants and guineafowl that had entered their markets. There are various ways that this confusion could have come about, but it’s generally known that the “turkey” connection is because it was either mistaken for, or associated with, animals that had come from Turkey.As trade routes and markets developed, the word “turkey” became assigned to Meleagris specifically, at least in English, and the word went back to English-speaking North America, where it displaced the indigenous terminology for the bird. And that’s why turkeys are turkeys, even though they don’t come from turkey.On the rest of the map, you can see that other European countries suffered the same difficulty. The French “dinde,” and all the words to the right that are variations of “indyk,” are referring to India - the “bird from India.” The “kalk” words in the Nordic countries are referring to “Calcutta” (Kolkata.) As everyone knows, chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus)are originally from Southeast Asia, so they are more accurately “the bird from India” while the turkey really ought to be “The bird of the Mayan empire.”Portugal is sticking to its guns there, with “Peru” - which is actually slightly accurate.NOW it makes sense why it’s called “kalkun” in Indonesian – it’s all the Dutch’s fault.(My first instinct was toblame Norway, which made no sense, then I realized that Dutch spelling is a thing we also used to use. So yeah.)…I’m honestly just likeof course it’s our fault, when is it ever not, ahahaha -- source link
#linguistics