These are thought to arise from the supposed belief of Christopher Columbus that he had reached India rather than the Americas on his voyage. Other European names for turkeys incorporate an assumed Indian origin, such as dinde ('from India') in French, индюшка ( indyushka, 'bird of India') in Russian, indyk in Polish and Ukrainian, and hindi ('India') in Turkish. The lack of context around his usage suggests that the term was already widespread. William Shakespeare used the term in Twelfth Night, believed to be written in 1601 or 1602.
In 1550, the English navigator William Strickland, who had introduced the turkey into England, was granted a coat of arms including a "turkey-cock in his pride proper". Again the importers lent the name to the bird hence Turkey-cocks and Turkey-hens, and soon thereafter, turkeys. Ī second theory arises from turkeys coming to England not directly from the Americas, but via merchant ships from the Middle East, where they were domesticated successfully. The name of the North American bird thus became turkey fowl or Indian turkeys, which was then shortened to just turkeys. One theory is that when Europeans first encountered turkeys in America, they incorrectly identified the birds as a type of guineafowl, which were already being imported into Europe by Turkey merchants via Constantinople and were therefore nicknamed Turkey coqs (Middle Eastern merchants were called Turkey merchants as much of that area was part of the Ottoman Empire at that time). Plate 1 of The Birds of America by John James Audubon, depicting a wild turkeyĪccording to linguist Mario Pei, there are two possible explanations for the name turkey.
The genus Meleagris is the only extant genus in the tribe Meleagridini, formerly known as the family Meleagrididae or subfamily Meleagridinae, but now subsumed within the subfamily Phasianinae. Turkeys are classed in the family Phasianidae ( pheasants, partridges, francolins, junglefowl, grouse, and relatives thereof) in the taxonomic order Galliformes. The type species is the wild turkey ( Meleagris gallopavo). The genus name is from the Ancient Greek μελεαγρις, meleagris meaning "guineafowl". The genus Meleagris was introduced in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae.
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