At a bilingual feed of appropriately festive proportions I am reminded that one of the Spanish words for turkey is el pavo, and that this is the Latin word for peacock: pavo (gen. pavonis).
Apparently, early European settlers in the Americas took the turkey to be a species of peacock. This is not as crazy as it might seem. After all, turkeys do have an impressive fan of tail feathers, and that is what peacocks are known for. If you knew the one by reputation only and encountered the other, it would be easy to make a misidentification.
The North American Meleagris gallopavo (note the descriptive species name gallopavo: lit. "chicken-peacock") seems to have been tagged with the name turkey as the result of other confusions. Apparently, in the sixteenth century the guinea fowl was already being imported into Europe from Madagascar via Turkey, and hence it was known as a turkey. When the North American bird was traded up into Europe along the same route, it was confused with the guinea hen and called by the same name.
At least, this it what I am given to understand here.
Conspiracy theorists take note: the role of Madagascar here as the origin of guinea fowl provides a potential Lemurian connection for these tangled etymologies.
Gerast áskrifandi að:
Birta ummæli (Atom)
Engin ummæli:
Skrifa ummæli