Türkiye, the nation, had the UN officially recognize the spelling of its name in English as Türkiye (tur-key-YAY) in 2022 to have the spelling match the pronunciation in Turkish. But it is still hard for some people to call it that. Even for the Turks, many of whom called it Turkey for decades and then had to change in 2022. By now, most remember. If one slips up, no one comments. They are forgiving.
But until then, why did the place and the bird share the same name?
The land was called, “the land of the Turks” = Turkey. Pronounced, tur-key-YAY, but in English the Y at the end doesn’t have that “yay” sound. The land, whatever its name, has had humans living on, in, it for a long, wait, really long, time. More than 12,000 years. That’s considered a long time in human history. One of the many names was “Asia Minor,” or “Anatolia” which derives from the Greek term for where the “sun rises” or “levant” which means to “rise” or “sunrise” and before that, “the Land of the Hattians.” So, even over here in Adana, all roads lead to Rome. But more about that some other time.
So how did it become “Turkey?” For that we move forward to 1077 when the Seljuk Turks set up their nation and called it the “Sultanate of Rūm” referring to the area being considered “Eastern Rome” and today rūm refers to Orthodox Christians who were in this part of the world since Christianity arose. Keep in mind that St. Paul was born in Tarsus, less than an hour’s drive from Adana. With the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Sultan Mehmed II declared himself, “Kayser-i-Rum” or “Caesar of the Romans” or Emperor. So all roads do lead to Rome… by the 12th century, Europeans, west of the Balkans, started using the term, “Turchia” which is what the modern Romans, Italians, call Türkiye. So even though the first of the Turkic groups to rule modern day Türkiye, called it something else, from this point on, the land started becoming more and more Turkish.
Now, to the bird. By the way, as an aside, the way that the Turks give the bird is quite dramatic and done with flourish. More on that another time.
The bird, the Meleagris gallopavo, is indigenous to the Americas. When the Europeans encountered the bird, they called it guinea fowl or turkey cock/hen as they had seen pheasants and guinea fowl from Africa that looked similar. But, maybe not as big. In 1550, an Englishman William Strickland, who had introduced the bird to England (the first turkeys in Europe were taken to Spain by the Spanish from Mexico), was given a coat of arms which included the “turkey-cock in his pride proper.” Turkeys were introduced to North America by the English in the 17th century.
The bird was named after the country. Why? This article explains it well. Basically, when the birds were being traded for food, a confusion arose between the bird from the Americas with a bird from Africa…
But was it a fair trade? And should we re-name the bird? Call it the Mexican fowl? Or “huexolotl”? That’s the sixteenth-century Nahuatl, language of the central America, name. So for Americans who celebrate Thanksgiving or “Turkey-day”, they could say, “Happy Huexolotl!”
That said, here in Adana, they do not eat so much turkey. Mostly chicken.