On 2012-08-31 17:28:30 +0000, Jerry Friedman said:
> On Aug 31, 10:51�am, Reinhold {Rey} Aman <
a...@sonic.net> wrote:
>> James Hogg wrote:
>>> abc wrote:
>>>> Jerry Friedman wrote:
>>>>> Reinhold {Rey} Aman wrote:
>>>>>> Jerry Friedman wrote:
>>>>>>> For some Bulgarians, Egypt. �For many Egyptians, Greece. �For
>>>>>>> Greeks, France. �For French people, India. �For many Indians
>>>>>>> (from India), Peru. �For English speakers?
>>
>>>>>> Turkey.
>>
>>>>> Thank you!
>>
>>>> I'm totally lost here. How about an explanation?
>>
>>> This exotic bird was called after different countries depending on
>>> where it was believed to come from. The French name is "dinde" which
>>> means "from India". The Greek word is "gallos", referring to Gaul,
>>> and so on.
>>
>> For more names, see:
>>
>> <
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_names_for_the_Wild_Turkey>
>
> Which was our source. My favorites are the Chinese names.
I like the Malay "ayam belanda" (Dutch chicken).
>
> I'd think most of the names there refer mainly to the domestic turkey,
> though.
I went through all the possibilities offered by Google Translate (all
the ones I could read, anyway: it offers transliterations of Georgian,
Tamil, Telegu and Gujarati, among others, but not for some I'd have
expected, like Hebrew, Arabic and Armenian. What I find extraordinary
is the sheer number of non-cognate words.
I was surprised at how many have "kalkoen" or something similar, which
didn't suggest any geographical namr. I briefly thought of the right
answer (Calicut), but for some reason I rejected it.
I'm surprised about your "many Indians", because all of the ones I
could read have "tarki" or something similar.
I was also surprised (in Google) at Azerbaijani "turkey", because I
thought it hardly possible that they would regard Turkey as an exotic
place. However, the English spelling suggests thery just adopted the
English name without regard to its meaning. Google offers an
alternative "hinduska", which looks nicer and clearly puts Azerbaijani
in the Indian camp.
--
athel