Because the turkey is native to America, it is not mentioned in the Torah. Therefore, a name was devised for this bird in modern Hebrew. What is that name?
A. The turkey is called tarnegol hodu. Tarnegol means chicken. Hodu means thanks (the same root as todah.). By the time President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving as a national holiday in 1863, turkey had already become the traditional meal of the day. Trade between the United States and Europe was a major industry by that time, including the American export of turkeys. As European rabbis determined that this new bird was in fact a kosher bird, they connected the American holiday to the bird and assigned it the name tarnegol hodu, chicken of thanks.
B. The turkey is called tarnegol hodu. Tarnegol means chicken. Hodu means India. The bird got this name because it was believed that America, where these birds were native, was part of India; thus the bird was called Indian chicken.
C. The turkey is called tarnegol hodu. Tarnegol means chicken. Hodu means India. Turkey was served by the native Americans, or Indians, to the Pilgrims at Plymouth at the first Thanksgiving celebration in 1621. In 1649, Solomon Franco, a Dutch-Jewish merchant in Boston, heard of this dinner, and on a subsequent trip back to Europe, he introduced turkey to the Jewish community of Holland, explaining that it was an Indian bird; hence the name.
D. The turkey is called tarnegol gadol, meaning big chicken.
E. The turkey was called tzipor gadol, meaning big bird. However, in 1983, the Children’s Television Workshop, creator of Sesame Street, licensed Israeli Educational Television to produce an Israeli version of the show, Rechov Sumsum. As part of their negotiations, the Children’s Television Workshop petitioned The Academy of the Hebrew Language to change the turkey’s Hebrew name to avoid confusion, as Big Bird, while variously described as an ibis, a golden condor, or even a canary, was definitely not a turkey. As a result, since that time turkeys in Israel have been referred to as nesher katan, or little vulture.