So, wanna know why we call them turkeys? Here ya go.
Apparently when Europeans were first trampling through North America, they incorrectly identified the wild native birds as Asian guinea fowl, or what was known then as a Turkey hen and Turkey cock (hey...that's what it says, don't look at me like that), because it was imported to Central Europe through Turkey (of course, it wasn't Turkey then, it was the Ottoman Empire, so now I'm super confused). Eventually, those crazy Europeans just shortened the bird's name to turkey, and that stuck as the name of the bird.
(And did you know that a group of turkeys is called a rafter? Seriously!)
My Turkish students are not super crazy about sharing a name with our fabulous bird. They keep asking me: Why don't you call us by our real name: Türkiye? I tell them there are two reasons: A. No one in the U.S. knows how to pronounce the umlaud (ü). And B.) What do they call us? A.B.D., which translates to: Amerika Birlesik Devletleri (United States of America). Every country calls other countries by their own special names.
Finally, Turkey as we now know it became a nation in 1923. Turkish students, I ask you this: You knew we were calling the birds turkeys then, but you chose to name your country Turkey anyway. So really, where does the blame lie?
That was my guess! I swear!
ReplyDeleteIt just goes to show that you're ridiculously brilliant. :)
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