It could possibly’t be nice to know that your nation doesn’t declare sole recognition for its identify. This, after all, is the plight of the individuals of Turkey, who all the time need to undergo via having an undignified suffix added to its each point out: “Turkey, the nation.”
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However what got here first — the turkey, or the Turkey? And was it a translation error, a tribute or only a pure unlucky happenstance?
First, for individuals who nonetheless is likely to be behind on primary edible fowl info, turkeys aren’t native to Turkey. Actually, there aren’t any wild turkeys in Turkey in any respect. The turkey, a minimum of by that identify, is native to North America, as found by pilgrims and colonists. Which makes this all of the extra complicated, on condition that although the fashionable republic of Turkey was shaped in 1923, the phrase itself (and never for the fowl) goes again to the 1300s, used to confer with land occupied by the individuals generally known as Turks.
In different phrases, the Turks had an extended, blissful interval the place nobody was complicated them with a kind of poultry, as a result of the encompassing continents had by no means heard of the fowl in query.
However though there have been no turkeys residing or being offered in Turkey, there have been different birds that have been synonymous with the Turks, together with one specifically that we now know because the guinea fowl. The guinea fowl isn’t native to Turkey both, nevertheless it was imported from Africa and offered by the Turks to the Europeans. In want of a well-recognized identify for market, they merely mixed the vendor with an analogous product, and offered these guinea fowls below the identify of the “turkey-cock” or “turkey-hen.”
In spite of everything this pre-American historical past, we lastly get to the New World, and settlers discover a model new fowl. One which they’d by no means seen earlier than, however that, to them, appeared much like a guinea fowl, or once more, as they referred to as them, turkey-cocks. They stored that identify when these turkey-cocks started to be despatched again to Europe, ensuing, I’m positive, in Turkish retailers going, “Wait, what the hell is that?”
The identify caught, and abruptly the Turks, and their storied and proud empire, had inherited the heritage of a fowl that appeared prefer it had testicles hanging off of its beak.
