Fact 67: why are turkeys called turkeys? (the bird)
Fact 67: why are turkeys called turkeys?
This is slightly more complicated than I thought it would be so I will try and do my best!
Basically the reason is because turkeys the thing we the British, eat at Christmas, looks like another bird, called guinea fowl, also called, (nicknamed) Turkey hen and, Turkeys cock (stop giggling it is not funny 😂). Guinea fowl are actually from Africa however Britain came to call the guinea fowl the turkey-cock or turkey-hen because we got the guinea fowl from the Turks. So basically when the America's (then known as the New World) had a bird that looked slightly similar (if you close your eyes and forget what they both look like because personally I can't see much similarity). The British people decided to call it a Turkey because it looked slightly like the guinea fowl so Americans decided to call it the turkey as well.
The wild Turkeys scientific name is Meleagris gallopavo the scientific name for a domestic Turkey is Meleagris gallopavo domesticus.
The Turkish interestingly call the Turkeys (bird) Hindi this means Indian. The French interestingly call turkeys, coq d'Inde this means rooster of India recently French have started to call the turkey, dinde. This is because of the old misconception that India and the New World (America) were the same place.
