Language musings with the humble turkey
You may be, quite fairly, thinking what an odd topic for an article. Yet these curious birds reveal how words are formed and how languages differ in their perspectives of one and the same thing. Read on to discover more about these creatures than you ever thought you needed…
Firstly, contrary to a once firmly held belief, they do not hail from Turkey, a country that bridges Europe and Asia. Their connection with Turkey seems to be that the traders who supplied them were Turkish and they were therefore originally called Turkie cocks. This farmyard bird is peculiar across the world for being named after other countries, mostly India. The reason for this might be that some of the imported birds reached Europe with the help of Indian traders. The French word is dinde, originally d’Inde, which translates as from India. Meanwhile, in Polish it is indyk, in Hebrew Tarngol Hodu or Indian fowl and in Dutch Kalkoen or Calcutta hen.
In Turkey, the animal is called a hindi, which literally translates as Indian. Oddly enough, in India it is called a peru. The people of Vietnam call it the Western chicken (gà tây), in Breton it’s a chicken from Spain (yar-Spagn) and in Malay it’s a Dutch one (ayam belanda). Some speculated that turkeys came from France, so for example in Gaelic languages turkeys are called French chicken or French cockerel: cearc fhrancach in Irish Gaelic or kellagh frangagh in Manx.
There are languages in which the name for this bird does not have anything to do with countries or places. German (Pute) and Bulgarian (пуйка (puyka)) designations simply refer to the distinctive sound the bird makes. Other notable mentions are the Japanese 七面鳥 (seven-faced bird (shichimenchou)), 火鸡 (fire chicken (huoji)) in Mandarin Chinese and வான்கோழி (sky chicken (vaan kozhi)) in Tamil.
All the geographical confusion aside, the poor old turkey doesn’t even have its own defining Latin name – translated literally, Meleagris gallopavo means guinea-fowl chicken-peacock. Poor old turkey.
The humble turkey does, however, get a mention in a few idioms. To go cold turkey means to give something up, usually immediatedly, like smoking. To talk turkey means to speak openly and directly, the opposite of beating around the bush. To gobble something up means to eat something at speed. And if a situation is like turkeys voting for Christmas, then people are supporting a decision that will ultimately put them at a disadvantage. In French, if you are le dindon de la farce (literally the turkey of the joke), you are being taken for a ride.
During the festive season, it’s traditional to serve turkey at the dinner table in the US and UK. In England, a past tradition before the days of refrigeration was for farmers to walk turkeys in their thousands down to capital, where they’d then be sold at market. Other countries have different tastes, however. In Bulgaria, for example, no meat is usually served on Christmas Eve and pork tends to be served on Christmas Day itself, much like in Hungary. In Poland, carp is traditionally served at Christmas.
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Language aficionados at heart, First Edition Translations is a personal translation agency based in Cambridge, UK. Each of our team members brings a solid training in linguistics and translation to the table, not to mention a passion for words. We work with private individuals, businesses and non-profit organisations to facilitate cross-cultural communication. We are extremely proud to have operated since 1981 and are always happy to provide advice. So whether you want to talk turkey or Turkish, you can contact our multilingual project managers at enquiries@firstedit.co.uk