Before tucking in this year, spare a thought for the journey made by the big-bodied, bright-plumed and flightless bird that may have landed on your Christmas table. Wherever this specimen was raised and wherever you are dining, the species has travelled a very long distance to reach you. Five hundred years ago the turkey starred in a world tour as a thing of wonder. Its best souvenirs are the names it collected along the way. In the English-speaking world, no schoolchild fails to notice that the holiday bird and a certain Near Eastern country share the same name. The turkey, however, does not come from Turkey; the story behind this fact shows just how many errors can be strung together to make a single word. Of all the turkey's misnomers, the official Linnaean name from 1758 must qualify as the wrongest: Meleagris gallopavo gallopavo. It crosses Greek roots with Latin to mean "guinea-fowl chicken-peacock chicken-peacock". Wrong on five counts, but typical. The only thing the turkey's namers have got right consistently is that the bird is not-from-here.
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