It's Thanksgiving--So Let's Talk Guajalote

The Blogymology (Blog + Etymology)
I felt particularly enlightened in a college Spanish class to learn that quite a few names in English and Spanish for native animals and foods, especially those ending with “-ate” or “-ote,” come from Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs.

Try coyote and ocelot (ocelote in Spanish). Originally coyotl and tlalocelotl in Nahuatl, they’re animals indigenous to this continent. Then we have foods like chocolate (xocoltl, from xococ, bitter, and atl, water), tomato (from Spanish tomate, from Nahuatl tomatl, meaning swelling fruit), and elote, a Spanish word for corn, coming from the Aztec word elotl. Avocado is a folk etymology (meaning someone heard the original word wrong and turned it into something more familiar) for Spanish aguacate, coming from Nahuatl ahuakatl.

Now, after all the preamble, let’s combine food and animal and talk turkey. That is, in Spanish, guajalote. Which is borrowed from Nahuatl huexolotl.

Unlike tomatl to tomate to tomato, obviously we didn’t turn guajolote into an English word like waholo or something like that. Why not? Why turkey? Part of the reason probably lies in the fact that turkeys weren’t first eaten by Europeans on their home ground. Instead, Europeans first imported the birds from the Americas in the 1500’s. Incorrectly thinking the fowl came from the same family as some other delectable birds which they (also incorrectly) thought came from Turkey, they assigned the name turkey.

So now we talk turkey instead of waholo or guajalote or huexolotl. I don’t know; I think talking huexolotl sounds intriguing…. Let’s talk huexolotl.


Sources:
http://podictionary.com/?p=485
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=tomato&searchmode=none
http://aulex.ohui.net/es-nah/?idioma=en

The Book
I define “talking turkey” in terms of other idiomatic expressions like cutting to the chase or getting down to the nitty gritty or getting to the business at hand without beating around the bush. Eoin Colfer’s lead character Fletcher Moon in the middle-grade mystery Half-Moon Investigations is a twelve-year-old detective chagrined by his weaknesses (wimpiness, uncoolness, etc.) but compelled by his strength, detecting, and he tells his story in detective straight talk. In other words, he talks turkey. It’s a fun book with unexpected twists, turns and friendships, and I’ll look for the next one in the series.

To learn more about Eoin (pronounced "Owen") Colfer, go to http://www.eoincolfer.com/.