Wayne Harbert, professor of linguistics at Cornell University, explains the word origins behind some of the most popular Thanksgiving dinner items.
He says:
“Turkeys are named after the country Turkey, even though they don't come from there. They are native to the North America. The name is the result of a chain of confusion. Guinea fowl were the first birds called turkeys, at a time when they were mistakenly thought to come from Turkey. They actually come from western Africa. When turkeys were encountered in the new world, they were in turn confused with guinea fowl, and the name was transferred to them. “Gravy is one of a few words in English that owe their existence to confusions about spelling. The word seems to have started out as 'grane' in Old French, which referred to a grainy sauce or stew (from Latin granatus, meaning 'having many seeds'). It was then borrowed into Middle English. At the time, the sound 'v' was written with a 'u' in the middles of words, and the shape of the letter 'u' was very similar to 'n' in the handwriting of that era. Someone misread the 'n' of 'grany' as a 'u' - that is to say, a 'v', and we suddenly had gravy. “Cranberry comes to English from Dutch. The plant was known as a Kraanbere 'crane-berry' in Dutch, apparently because the stamens on its blossoms reminded someone of the bill of a crane.”
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