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Re: chicken in America: from Asia? (cont.)





On 14 Dec 1996, Yuri Kuchinsky wrote:

> Peter van Rossum (pmv100@psu.edu) wrote:
> : In article <58s1k6$k8b@news1.io.org> yuku@io.org (Yuri Kuchinsky) writes:
> 
> : I don't understand why Carter thinks this is a problem.  If Atahualpa was
> : named after his uncle and the chicken was named after Atahualpa why
> : is this a problem for the naming of the uncle?  The uncle was given his
> : name by his parents, end of story.
> 
> I can see that there may be some apparent logical inconsistency in what
> Carter said. Nevertheless, the case of the Incas is still extremely
> curious. If they named the chicken after the Emperor, as you suggest, it
> probably happened before the Emperor was deposed. 
> 
> What would be the likelihood of naming a new cultural import coming from a
> hostile source after the Emperor?

Or, perhaps "hualpa" was the name of a bird indigineous to the Andes. The 
chicken reminded the Inca of this "hualpa", hence they used the same name 
for it. There is another quote from Carter that supports this 
interpretation: "The name for the chicken in the Inca Empire precedes the 
Spanish by at least two generations, though no one can prove that it then 
meant chicken."                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The Spaniards encountered a new bird when they reached the shores of the 
New World, the turkey. Did they simply adopt the indigineous name for it?
No, they named it after a bird they were very familiar with, the peacock.
Look in any Spanish dictionary, el pavo (or la pava) can be applied to 
either the peacock or the turkey (though, the peacock is usually referred 
to pavo real, "true peacock").

The Navajo word for horse translates roughly as "big dog". They did not 
adopt an alien word for horse, but named after an animal they were 
familiar with that roughly resembled the horse.

The presence of a native word for an item does not give us any clue as to 
how long that plant or animal had been present. The word could originally 
have been applied to one plant or animal, and then reapplied to a foreign
plant or animal that roughly resembled it. Why do you think Linneaus came 
up with scientific system for naming animals? Because of situations like 
this.


Jeff Baker
   


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