During your Thanksgiving meal, did you stop to think about the word “turkey?” Turkey seems to be a weird name for a North American bird, right? Here’s an explanation of how the name came about.
Turkeys were introduced to England around 1526. The birds were brought to the country by merchants who traded in the Turkish-controlled Mediterranean, “Turkey merchants.” Information not being as readily available then as it is today, most English assumed that the large birds came from the East, unaware that they were brought to Europe by the Spanish. And thus the name “turkey.”
So all of those mental images you have of Henry VIII chowing down on a turkey leg are totally plausible.
