Re: Bucket

Quoting ROGER MILLS <rfmilly@...>:

> Andreas Johansson wrote:
> >Quoting Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>:
> > > Indonesian surely got them both from Dutch: emmer and kalkoen [kalkun]--
> >Du.
> > > "kalkoen" looks kind-of foreign, I wonder if it's via Turkish or perhaps
> > > Arabic. Finnish I think more likely borrows from German or Swedish--
> >does
> > > "[kalkun]" or some such occur in those langs.?
> >
> >The bird's called _kalkon_ /kal'ku:n/ in Swedish. A check in the dictionary
> >tells me its from Dutch, and that the Dutch form is short for _kalkoensche
> >haan_
> >(presumably _kalkoense_ in modern Dutch?), meaning "hen of Calicut".
> >
> Whaddya know. Thanks. Where did Europeans get the idea that the turkey came
> from the East? Just because of it's rather baroque appearance?
To early 16th C Europeans, the Americas were part of "India" (cf the West
Indies).  Calicut being at the time the most important eastern port for European
traders, _kalkoensch_ was used to refer to anything "Indian".

                                                  Andreas