Here’s Turkey Got Its Name Despite Not Having a Single Wild Turkey Within Its Borders

It can’t be great to know that your country doesn’t claim sole recognition for its name. This, of course, is the plight of the people of Turkey, who always have to suffer through having an undignified suffix added to its every mention: “Turkey, the country.” 

But what came first — the turkey, or the Turkey? And was it a translation error, a tribute or just a pure unfortunate happenstance?

First, for those who still might be behind on basic edible bird information, turkeys aren’t native to Turkey. In fact, there aren’t any wild turkeys in Turkey at all. The turkey, at least by that name, is native to North America, as discovered by pilgrims and colonists. Which makes this all the more confusing, given that though the modern republic of Turkey was formed in 1923, the word itself (and not for the bird) goes back to the 1300s, used to refer to land occupied by the people known as Turks. 

In other words, the Turks had a long, blissful period where no one was confusing them with a type of poultry, because the surrounding continents had never heard of the bird in question.

But although there were no turkeys living or being sold in Turkey, there were other birds that were synonymous with the Turks, including one in particular that we now know as the guinea fowl. The guinea fowl isn’t native to Turkey either, but it was imported from Africa and sold by the Turks to the Europeans. In need of a familiar name for market, they simply combined the seller with a similar product, and sold these guinea fowls under the name of the “turkey-cock” or “turkey-hen.”

After all this pre-American history, we finally get to the New World, and settlers find a brand new bird. One that they’d never seen before, but that, to them, looked similar to a guinea fowl, or again, as they called them, turkey-cocks. They kept that name when these turkey-cocks began to be sent back to Europe, resulting, I’m sure, in Turkish merchants going, “Wait, what the hell is that?” 

The name stuck, and suddenly the Turks, and their storied and proud empire, had inherited the heritage of a bird that looked like it had testicles hanging off of its beak.