# A turkey by any other name



## Robotshaw

I was wondering why the word for turkey (bird) is turkey while the word in French is dinde which obviously means "from India" and the Portuguese is peru. Can anyone explain the confusion about the bird's origin?


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## 0m1

From etymonline.com:


> 1540s, "guinea fowl" (Numida meleagris), imported from Madagascar via Turkey, by Near East traders known as turkey merchants. The larger North American bird (Meleagris gallopavo) was domesticated by the Aztecs, introduced to Spain by conquistadors (1523) and thence to wider Europe, by way of North Africa (then under Ottoman rule) and Turkey (Indian corn was originally turkey corn or turkey wheat in English for the same reason). The word turkey was first applied to it in English 1550s because it was identified with or treated as a species of the guinea fowl. The Turkish name for it is hindi, lit. "Indian," probably via M.Fr. dinde (c.1600, contracted from poulet d'inde, lit. "chicken from India," Mod.Fr. dindon), based on the common misconception that the New World was eastern Asia. The New World bird itself reputedly reached England by 1524 at the earliest estimate, though a date in the 1530s seems more likely.



It does not mention Portuguese "peru", but one might presume that's related to its introduction to America by the Spanish, and its spread from there.


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## sakvaka

Just FYI, in Finnish and Swedish the bird is known as _kalkon_ or _kalkkuna_. This originally means "the bird of Calicut" or "the bird of Kozhikode, India".


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## hollabooiers

sakvaka said:


> Just FYI, in Finnish and Swedish the bird is known as _kalkon_ or _kalkkuna_. This originally means "the bird of Calicut" or "the bird of Kozhikode, India".



Same for Estonian (surprise surprise ), it's _kalkun_.


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## 0m1

So so far India's leading with four languages, followed by Turkey with one and Peru with another, in the race for the linguistic homeland-claim of the bird  Actually, Ethiopa'd be on one too, as we call it _ḥabash_ in Arabic, ḥabash also being the name for Ethipia in that tongue


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## sakvaka

0m1 said:


> So so far India's leading with four languages, followed by Turkey with one and Peru with another, in the race for the linguistic homeland-claim of the bird  Actually, Ethiopa'd be on one too, as we call it _ḥabash_ in Arabic, ḥabash also being the name for Ethipia in that tongue



Oh no!  Are you able to write it in the original script? Is it حبش ?


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## 0m1

sakvaka said:


> Oh no!  Are you able to write it in the original script? Is it حبش ?



Yup, that's right


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## itreius

Croatian and Slovenian call it "puran", which supposedly comes from the Italian word "peruano".


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## 0m1

Well, I've had a bit of fun with this word... mainly using http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/turkey#Translations

Languages that call it "Indian"
*Arabic*: Diik Hindi
*Turkish*: Hindi
*Hebrew: *tarnegol Hodu
*Yiddish*: Indik
*Armenian*: Hndkahav
*Azeri*: Hindisgha
*Basque*: Indioilar
*Breton*: yar-Indez
*Catalan*: Gall Dindi
*French*: Dinde
*Friulian*: Dindi
*Sardinian*: Dindu
*Maltese*: Dundjan
*Polish*: Indyczka
*Russan*: Indjúk
*Ukranian*: Indýk
*Belarusian*: Dzíkaja Indýčka
*Greek: *Thianos (Διάνος)

Languages that call it "Calcuttan"
*Low Saxon: *Kalkuun*
West Frisian: *Kalkoen*
Faroese: *Kalkun*
Icelandic: *Kalkúnn*
Afrikaans: *Kalkoen*
Dutch: *Kalkoen*
Danish: *Kalkun*
Norwegian: *Kalkun*
Swedish: *Kalkon*
Estonian: *Kalkun*
Finnish: *Kalkkunna*
Lithuana: *Kalakutas*
Indonesian: *Kalkun

Languages that call it "Turkish"
*English: *Turkey*
Lower Sorbian: *Turk*
Telugu: *Tarkee

Languages that call it "Ethiopian"
*Arabic: *Diik il-ḥabash(or حبش, just for you, sakvaka )

Other Etymologies
*Bosnian: *Curka, Curan*
Czech: *Krocan*, *Kruta*
Romanian: *Curcan*
Serbian: *Curka*
Slovak: *Moriak, Morka
*
Croatian*: Puran*
Slovene**: *Puran

*Spanish: *Pavo*
Tagalog: *Pabo*

Italian: *Tacchino

*Hungarian*: Pulyka
*Bulgarian*: Pujka

*Greek: *Galopula (γαλοπούλα)

*German:* Truthahn


A few interesting etymological points are raised here; Germanic languages and those surrounding them and presumably influenced by them (Finno-Ugric and Baltic) overwhelmingly go for "Calcuttan", with the notable except of German, and with the interesting addition of Indonesian. 

Slavic (and their Sprachbund) seem very split, with many opting for "Indian", while others go with the Kurk- derivatives, though its meaning and etymology I am clueless about; perhaps even Puran is derived from the Curan words, I don't know...  

I am similarly clueless about Tacchino and Pavo, and interestingly aside from Hungarian, the only other language to call it Pulyka is Bulgarian, leading me to suspect that that word is of Hungarian, Finno-Ugric origin, perhaps?

English the only major language to call it Turkish, which only two more languages do, interestingly. Romance languages overwhelmingly opt for "Indian". Arabic seems to have three different words listed, ḥabash, hindi and ruum, though in my personal experience I've only heard the first; the second, obviously, is "Indian", and the third literally means "Roman", though is also synonymous with "foreign" or "Western".

One final etymological note, unrelated, for once, to the word for the country, is that of Belarusian Dzíkaja Indýčka, of which the first word, Dzíkaja, sounds suspicously similar to Arabc "diik", meaning rooser or fowl, seen in the Arabic words for Turkey themselves.


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## itreius

0m1 said:


> and with the interesting addition of Indonesian.


Most likely the Dutch influence on Indonesian.


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## phosphore

In Serbian we say _ćurka_ (female, non-marked) and ć_uran_ (male, marked). My etymological dictionary says the origin of the word is probably onomatopeic, although it resembles greatly the root _turk_ which stands for Turkey.


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## ilocas2

You forgot *Slovak* and *German*

*Slovak*
moriak - male
morka - female


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## apmoy70

Add Greek among the languages that call it "Indian":
«Διάνος» (ði'ʝanos _m._) from «Ινδιάνος» (Inði'anos _m._) _the Indian_.
An alternative name that lately has prevailed is «γαλοπούλα» (ɣalo'pula _f._); some philologists claim that it derives from the Venetian _galo_ (rooster, cock) + feminine diminutive suffix «-πούλα»; others connect it with _Galatia_, the area of central Anatolia in modern Turkey (named for the immigrant Gauls who settled there in the 3rd century BC)


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## origumi

Hebrew: "tarnegol Hodu" = Indian Hen, where "tarnegol" is a Sumerian loadword for hen, "Hodu" = India.


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## Robotshaw

Thanks a lot everyone! What a complicatedly named animal.


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## Montesacro

0m1 said:


> Italian: *Tacchino*
> 
> 
> I am similarly clueless about Tacchino and Pavo (...)



_Tacchino_ possibly comes from _tacca_; one rather obsolete meaning of this word is _patch_ (of colour), in obvious relation to the plumage of the bird.


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## sokol

0m1 said:


> *German:* Pute



Careful - that's the word for turkey meat only (Putenfleisch); the animal itself is called "Truthuhn" (neutral) or "Truthahn" (male) (female theoretically could be "Truthenne", but that's hardly ever used); in colloquial speech "Truthahn" is by far the most common one.

The etymology of German "Trut-" (the second part is German native for "cock = Hahn, chicken = Huhn) is unclear, Kluge "Etymologisches Wörterbuch" suggests a Germanic root (Middle Lower German "droten - to menace/threaten", by the menacing behaviour male turkeys perform) but says that this is only a guess.
Also, Kluge says that in former times the animal also was called "indianischer Hahn" (= American, as "Indianer = >Red Indian<" = Native American), or alternatively "welscher" (= Romance = Italian) or "türkischer" (= Turkic) "Hahn".

And "Pute", according to Kluge again, has been loaned from Dutch in the 16th century and is explained as onomatopoetic.


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## 0m1

itreius said:


> Most likely the Dutch influence on Indonesian.



Ahh, makes sense



sokol said:


> Careful - that's the word for turkey meat only (Putenfleisch); the animal itself is called "Truthuhn" (neutral) or "Truthahn" (male) (female theoretically could be "Truthenne", but that's hardly ever used); in colloquial speech "Truthahn" is by far the most common one.
> 
> The etymology of German "Trut-" (the second part is German native for "cock = Hahn, chicken = Huhn) is unclear, Kluge "Etymologisches Wörterbuch" suggests a Germanic root (Middle Lower German "droten - to menace/threaten", by the menacing behaviour male turkeys perform) but says that this is only a guess.
> Also, Kluge says that in former times the animal also was called "indianischer Hahn" (= American, as "Indianer = >Red Indian<" = Native American), or alternatively "welscher" (= Romance = Italian) or "türkischer" (= Turkic) "Hahn".
> 
> And "Pute", according to Kluge again, has been loaned from Dutch in the 16th century and is explained as onomatopoetic.



Thanks for clearing up, interesting stuff!


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## Abu Rashid

Om1 said:
			
		

> So so far India's leading with four languages, followed by Turkey with  one and Peru with another, in the race for the linguistic homeland-claim  of the bird  Actually, Ethiopa'd be on  one too, as we call it _ḥabash_ in Arabic, ḥabash also being the  name for Ethipia in that tongue



I guess it depends on dialect, but the most common Arabic term I've come across is 'rumi' (meaning Roman, actually, Anatolian, or from 'Turkey'). In fus7a books that I've read, they always use 'rumi'.


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## 0m1

Abu Rashid said:


> I guess it depends on dialect, but the most common Arabic term I've come across is 'rumi' (meaning Roman, actually, Anatolian, or from 'Turkey'). In fus7a books that I've read, they always use 'rumi'.



Yeah definitely, I put it as both "Hindi" and "Habash" on that list, and I think mentioned "Rumi" too, but I've only ever heard Habash being used in speech (colloquial Lebanese, in my case), and as you say, it does come down to dialect. 

And is there really such a link between Rumi and Anatolian? I'd always thouht that was another generic word for "foreign" or "western", a bit like Ifranji ("Frankish").


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## sokol

Mod note: the question about Rumi has been moved to a new thread.


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## elirlandes

"Turcaí" in Irish - obviously a straight steal from English...


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## Angelo di fuoco

0m1 said:


> Other Etymologies
> *Bosnian: *Curka, Curan*
> Czech: *Krocan*, *Kruta*
> Romanian: *Curcan*
> Serbian: *Curka*
> Slovak: *Moriak, Morka
> *
> Croatian*: Puran*
> Slovene**: *Puran
> 
> Slavic (and their Sprachbund) seem very split, with many opting for "Indian", while others go with the Kurk- derivatives, though its meaning and etymology I am clueless about; perhaps even Puran is derived from the Curan words, I don't know...



About "puran" and the Slovak names of the birdI don't know, but let's just ask what's the word for "hen" or "rooster" in those languages. Wild guess: I know that rooster in Czech is "kohout", but there's also the word "kur"...



0m1 said:


> *Hungarian*: Pulyka
> *Bulgarian*: Pujka
> [...]
> and interestingly aside from Hungarian, the only other language to call it Pulyka is Bulgarian, leading me to suspect that that word is of Hungarian, Finno-Ugric origin, perhaps?



To me it seams your guess is not correct: pulyka possibly was borrowed by Bulgarian from Hungarian, but in Hungarian this word looks like a Slavic loanword itself (made evident the typical Slavic female noun ending -ka), with a possible derivation from French "poule".
Another guess of mine: the *Greek: Galopula (γαλοπούλα)* without the "galo"...



0m1 said:


> One final etymological note, unrelated, for once, to the word for the country, is that of Belarusian Dzíkaja Indýčka, of which the first word, Dzíkaja, sounds suspicously similar to Arabc "diik", meaning rooser or fowl, seen in the Arabic words for Turkey themselves.



It's a wild guess, and when I say *wild* I mean it. This is a genuine common Slavic adjective (female form). No relation whatsoever to Arabic.


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## ireney

Angelo di fuoco said:


> Another guess of mine: the *Greek: Galopula (γαλοπούλα)* without the "galo"..



Yes, "Γαλοπούλα" comes from the Italian "Galo d'India"


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## Montesacro

ireney said:


> Yes, "Γαλοπούλα" comes from the Italian "Ga*l*lo d'India"


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## 0m1

Ah, fair enough, fair enough, I really didn't put that much time into researching that and as a result my wild, ignorant stabs in the dark have been exposed 



Angelo di fuoco said:


> To me it seams your guess is not correct: pulyka possibly was borrowed by Bulgarian from Hungarian, but in Hungarian this word looks like a Slavic loanword itself (made evident the typical Slavic female noun ending -ka), with a possible derivation from French "poule".
> Another guess of mine: the *Greek: Galopula (γαλοπούλα)* without the "galo"...



Makes sense!




Angelo di fuoco said:


> It's a wild guess, and when I say *wild* I mean it. This is a genuine common Slavic adjective (female form). No relation whatsoever to Arabic.



Well that's quite a coincidence then! Well, linguistics has been no stranger to even bigger ones, but you know


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## vandaman

In Macedonian is мисир /misir/ which is ancient name of Egypt-Those turkeys really traveled a lot


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## apmoy70

Montesacro said:
			
		

> Yes, "Γαλοπούλα" comes from the Italian "Gallo d'India"


Actually ireney is right it's "Galo" because it's a Venetian loanword (and not _Tuscan_)


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## Abu Rashid

vandaman said:
			
		

> In Macedonian is мисир /misir/ which is ancient name of Egypt-Those  turkeys really traveled a lot



Ancient? Misr is the current name, not ancient. The ancient name is "_Kemet"._


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## itreius

Abu Rashid said:


> Ancient? Misr is the current name, not ancient. The ancient name is "_Kemet"._



Maybe he meant the ancient _Macedonian_ name for Egypt?


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## apmoy70

itreius said:


> Maybe he meant the ancient _Macedonian_ name for Egypt?


Ancient _Macedonian _name for Egypt was Αἴγυπτος
Modern _Macedonian _is a South Slavic language with none so ever connection with the ancient one which was a North-Western variant of the Doric dialect of the Greek language


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## itreius

apmoy70 said:


> Ancient _Macedonian _name for Egypt was Αἴγυπτος
> Modern _Macedonian _is a South Slavic language with none so ever connection with the ancient one which was a North-Western variant of the Doric dialect of the Greek language



I'm perfectly aware of that which is why I only italicized Macedonian, not ancient. What I meant to say is, maybe he was referring to an _older_ or an archaic version of the name for Egypt, in Macedonian.


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## vandaman

Sorry for misunderstanding- Misir is a word used in Old Slavonic language for Egypt and it is still used in church - eg. Sv Sara Misirska (St Sarah of Egypt). The word Egypt in modern Macedonian is used for that country in the time of Faraohs and for modern Arab Republic- Misirs are also called Orthodox Christian Gypsies


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## Outsider

Spanish _pavo_ is traced back to Latin _pavus_ by the RAE dictionary. Portuguese has the cognate _pavão_, which however currently means "peacock". (Peacock in Spanish is _pavo real_.)

I couldn't find the etymology of Portuguese _peru_ online, but I'll look into it.


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## Ben Jamin

0m1 said:


> So so far India's leading with four languages, followed by Turkey with one and Peru with another, in the race for the linguistic homeland-claim of the bird  Actually, Ethiopa'd be on one too, as we call it _ḥabash_ in Arabic, ḥabash also being the name for Ethipia in that tongue


 In Polish the bird is called 'indyk', giving one point more to India.


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## Outsider

I looked this up in two etymological dictionaries, Francisco da Silveira Bueno's _Grande Dicionário Etimológico-Prosódico da Língua Portuguesa_, and José Pedro Machado's _Dicionário Etimológico da Língua Portuguesa_. Both suggest that Portuguese _peru_ originates in the phrase _galinha_ (or _galo_) _do Peru_, hen (or rooster) of Peru.

Machado, however, starts by saying that the origin of this word is "a riddle", adding that it has no counterparts in other Romance languages. He proposes that at one time the word _Peru_ in Portuguese was used in a broad sense for Spanish America as a whole. Here's an edited quote:



> Começou, afinal, no século XVI a convicção de que estas aves provinham do Peru [_gives instances of the phrases_ galinha do Peru _and_ galo do Peru _being used by authors of this period_] isso contribuíu porque, creio, fora do Brasil, pertencente aos Portugueses, o _Peru_ seria a região americana mais popular entre nós e a tal ponto que _Peru_ passaria a designar a América Espanhola [_but he provides no evidence of this_]. Dai, apesar destas aves provirem do México, acreditar-se que era realmente a região do _Peru_ (_latu sensu_) que as exportava para aqui. [...] O que é certo é que no séc. XVII já o voc. era corrente em Port.: «Deraõ no galinheiro de Santa Cruz por galhofa, depois de cantarem os galos, e fizeraõ tal descante nas galinhas, _perús_ e ganços sem compasso, que meteraõ tudo a saco», _Arte de Furtar_, cap. 66.


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## koniecswiata

It seems that basically everywhere this animal was seen as coming from some "far away exotic country"--Peru, Turkey, India.  In some other cases, a connection was made with some physical aspect of the bird.  In the case of Spanish, _pavo_ comes from the root for the bird that in German is called "_Pfau_" and in Polish "_Paw_"--i.e the _peacock_, which is called _pavo real_ ("royal turkey") in Spanish.  I suspect that this word comes from a Latin root.  I'm also under the impression that the turkey is a native of North America so it didn't really enter European/Asian languages until after 1500.  In many places, it is just now becoming a more common part of the cusine.


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## HUMBERT0

In Mexican Spanish we also call it “*Guajolote*” from *Nahuatl* hueyxōlōtl. In the article below it say that xolotl means twin, the twin of quetzalcóatl, but I’ve also read that xolotl means monster. So it means “great monster” or “great twin”. Guajolote also means dumb or playing dumb in Mexican Spanish.

http://www.elsiglodetorreon.com.mx/noticia/244044.las-palabras-tienen-la-palabra-de-guajolotes.html
“Casualmente huey en náhuatl significa grande y xólotl es gemelo. Entonces el hueyxólotl, el guajolote, es el gemelo grande. ¿Y por qué se le llama así? Porque los aztecas creían que su dios Quetzalcóatl, -la serpiente emplumada- tenía un ?gemelo? al que llamaban xólotl y que literalmente se hacía guajolote a la hora de cumplir las obligaciones que tenía chambeando de dios.

Es que una de las responsabilidades que tenían los dioses en un momento dado era convertirse en cuerpos celestes y xólotl, como los meros machos hueyes le sacó y huyó. Nada más que para despistar a los demás, de manera que no lo encontraran, se transformaba en diversas plantas o animales. Por eso digo que se hacía guajolote. Todo esto sucedía -claro- según la mitología de nuestros aborígenes aztecas.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xolotl

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meleagris
In this wikipedia article it also mentions the origin, but the date of 1511 to be exported to Europe sounds too early, Spaniards didn’t arrived in numbers to Mexico until 1519.

EDIT:
http://www.historiacocina.com/historia/articulos/guajolote.htm
Si bien el guajolote o pavo no es exclusivo de México, sí fue un ave que llamó la atención de los españoles desde el principio del período colonial, por ejemplo, en las Relaciones Geográficas de la Ciudad de Mérida, Yucatán,[2] escritas hacia 1579, contestando a la pregunta 27 que pedía información sobre “Los animales y aves bravos y domésticos de la tierra, y los que de España se han llevado, y cómo se crían y multiplican en ella.”, dice que: 
_... Crían los indios en sus casas gallinas o gallipavos que llaman en España, y danse (sic) en muy gran cantidad, porque se crían sin agua, y si la beben les es dañosa, que se les hinchan las cabezas y mueren. Después que vinieron los españoles, han dado en criar gallinas de Castilla y se hallan bien con ellas porque se crían y multiplican mucho, y se sustentan con poco grano por criarlas en campo donde siempre hay hierba que comen._ 

http://www.yoinfluyo.com/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=13466 
"...eb su obra Sumario de la Historia natural de las indias en 1537, época en la cual empezó a llegar el huaxolotl a España y extenderse por Europa y por el imperio Turco".

Saludos.


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## Ben Jamin

Angelo di fuoco said:


> It's a wild guess, and when I say *wild* I mean it. This is a genuine common Slavic adjective (female form). No relation whatsoever to Arabic.


 Specially that dziki(j)/dikij means wild.


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## koniecswiata

Humberto, that's interesting about Mexican Spanish associating turkey with being "dumb" (I'm assuming "stupid").  In Chilean Spanish "No seai pavo" means "don't be stupid"--or better yet "you turkey".  It seems that various languages associate the turkey with dumb behavior.


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## werrr

0m1 said:


> Slavic (and their Sprachbund) seem very split, with many opting for "Indian", while others go with the Kurk- derivatives, though its meaning and etymology I am clueless about; perhaps even Puran is derived from the Curan words, I don't know...


Czech etymology dictionaries suggest that the Czech term may be a corruption of German *Truthahn* or of related German dialectal term *Grutte*.



Ben Jamin said:


> In Polish the bird is called 'indyk', giving one point more to India.


It used to be called *indyán* in older Czech, clearly giving one point more to America, not to India.


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## Ben Jamin

apmoy70 said:


> Ancient _Macedonian _name for Egypt was Αἴγυπτος
> Modern _Macedonian _is a South Slavic language with none so ever connection with the ancient one which was a North-Western variant of the Doric dialect of the Greek language


 I think he meant 'old', but wrote 'ancient. No reason to fire up the quarrel about ancient Macedonia.


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## Cynastros

Robotshaw said:


> I was wondering why the word for turkey (bird) is turkey while the word in French is dinde which obviously means "from India" and the Portuguese is peru. Can anyone explain the confusion about the bird's origin?


    Perhaps we talking about colors.
5 π.χ. αιών. Ψευδ. Ιπποκράτους ,     Ερμηνεία περί ενεργών λίθων.

   < Τουρκέζον >  ουδέ άσπρη ουδέ πράσινη… κ[ο]λόρε τζελεστρίνα {?}. λατ. Χρώμα  - λίθου.
  Turquoise – mineral . 
*Γαλο*πούλα – παπα*γάλο*ς ...
  Μήπως τελικά μιλάμε για χρώματα ?


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