Grand Avenue by Mike Thompson for November 18, 2020

The original word “turkey” has its roots in a word that means “cock of Calicut”, dating back to when the Old World explorers brought turkeys from Mesoamerica around the world with them in trade – turkeys seemed to take to the Kerala climate well, so they were raised as expensive dinner birds – similar to pheasants in the Western world – for export…

…and Istanbul was a major port of call for exported Indian turkeys, thus leading to the new moniker.

(Just another incident of the Arab world getting the credit for Indian innovations. Not as major as the reappropriation of the number zero, or indeed the entire decimal system, as Bertrand Russell will attest…)

I don’t live near a farm, so why am I always surrounded by turkeys?

In the bird = stuffing, in a dish = dressing.

International incident caused by dropping a platter on Thanksgiving: the downfall of Turkey, the overthrow of Greece, and the destruction of China. – Golden Magazine, ca 1967

In Turkey, the bird is called a “persian”.

Be honest. Turkeys come from slaughter houses.

I’d like to find the country of Pumpkin Pie…

My friends and I used to say something about Turkey, Greece, and Hungary in some mnemonic device when studying for geography. I don’t recall it exactly now but it was fun at the time.