History of International Relations Textbook

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Turkey, hen from Kalikut

When one comes to live in Turkey, one of the first questions one might ask oneself is what “turkey,” the bird, is called in Turkish. The answer, it turns out, is hindi. Hmmm, interesting. In fact, as a quick internet search will establish, this terminology follows a common European pattern. The birds first turned up in Europe at a time, in the 16th century, when people still believed that it was “India” that the Europeans had discovered. This is why the French called it dinde (“from India”) and the Russians called it indeyka. In some other European languages, however, it is called kalkon (Swedish), kalkoen (Dutch) or kalkun (Estonian). But also here there is an Indian connection. As the popular lore would have it, the birds where shipped from the Indian city of Kalikut — today’s Kozhikode — and hence they were known as “hens from Kalikut.”

So, why are the English and the Americans alone in calling it “turkey”? The reason, it seems, is that the first turkeys that arrived in England originally were shipped via the Levant, or, possibly, that there was a mix-up with another sort of bird that originated here. Turkeys were thought to come from Turkey! Really, Americans should know better – the bird is native only to North and Central America.

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