Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 22:00:19 GMT Server: NCSA/1.4.2 Content-type: text/html Last-modified: Tue, 23 Apr 1996 16:27:33 GMT Content-length: 4028
The country is actually called "Türkiye" by its inhabitants, which means, not surprisingly, Land of Turks.
One explanation for the name Turkey is that it was coined by the British after the Turkish independence movement defeated the British occupation army and reclaimed Asia Minor, and was an attempt at showing scorn and disdain for the emerging republic.
Another explanation is that a bird that closely resembles the turkey, called the New Zealand guinea-fowl, was transported to the west through India and Ottoman Empire. When the New World settlers met the real turkey, a bird indigenous to North America, they named it after the familiar bird that used to come from Turkey. This explanation also explains why the turkish word for a turkey is "hindi."
The first explanation stipulates that we were named after a bird, and the second one suggests that the bird was named after us. I haven't yet decided which of the two explanations is better.
There are some extremely useful tenses and conjugations in Turkish that are hard to match in other languages. First is the "I did this in the past, I am doing it now, and I will do it in the future" tense, which has great uses during moments of anguish on Istanbul streets (esp. when combined with the wish tense and a reference to someone's maternal lineage). Second is the "I heard it from someone else" tense, which is great in telling stories, where you want to communicate some information of dubious validity to someone else, but don't want to be responsible for its accuracy. It is used quite often in daily life.
One of my pet hobbies is to record bizarre Turkish proverbs and sayings. I might make this collection public someday.
By the way, I believe I am singlehandedly responsible for the onomatopoeia "biy biy biy" in Turkish, which is commonly used today by the younger generation.