In Turkey, the word for turkey refers to:

A. India

A turkey in Turkey is called ‘hindi’, meaning ‘Indian’, and a lot of different languages reference India in their terms for turkey - French, Arabic, Russian, Polish, Italian. Why? Urgh, complicated! The bird we know in English as turkey was originally domesticated by the Aztecs, then later taken across the Atlantic by the Spanish. In England, the birds started being sold from around the mid-16th century, and they were called turkeys then either because they were mistaken for a kind of fowl already being sold there by Turkish traders; or because the Spanish introduced the turkeys to northern Africa, which was at the time under Turkish rule, and from there these turkeys were traded with other European countries.

And why do so many languages refer to India in their turkey names? Couple of possible reasons: one, that to much of Europe, Turkey, India, they’re all over to the east, aren’t they, who can tell the difference? The other, that India was one common name for the New World, often attributed to Christopher Columbus believing he had landed in India when he arrived in Caribbean. Other countries cited in different languages’ words for turkeys include: Netherlands! France! Greece! Ethiopia! Peru! Peru at least is on a similar longitude to where the birds originally came from. Basically, nobody is seeming that smart in their geographical turkey names.





