You might have noticed that I have used the word "TÜRKIYE" from time to time instead of Turkey. The official name of the
country is "Türkiye Cumhuriyeti", or, literally in English, "Republic of Turkey". The Turkish government, has
announced that, the word "TÜRKIYE" would be used on all official correspondences and documents starting in 1992. The reason
is obvious, of course, to prevent the confusion that is caused by using the same word for the animal "turkey". However,
this is not just a coincidence, and there is a solid reason, why this animal is also called "turkey". This is the same
reason why the word "India" in Turkish is "Hindistan", where "hindi" means "turkey the animal" in Turkish. It is so
believed that the Turkish people when first visited the America's in the 14 th century brought these
"large bird looking" animals with themselves. Similarly, long before this, the Indians (of India) brought this animal to
the Turkish lands. The name of the animal, actually took the name where it first came from. You may check this from any
encylopedia, or dictionary, such as American Heritage, or M. Webster. In one dictionary of word origins, however, I have
read that there is a controversy on the origin of the word "turkey". That dictionary claims that the reason why this animal
is called "turkey", indeed has something to do with the country "Turkey", but that is not because the animal first came
from Turkey. They say that, the people who first named the animal as "turkey" thought that the animal did come from the
Turkish lands, whereas, the animal has actually been living in Northern America since much earlier than that.
