The surname Palin is a name of English or Welsh origin. Possible derivations include an anglicization of the Welsh patronymic ap Heilyn or a reference to the English placenames Poling, West Sussex or Sea Palling, Norfolk.
A turkey is either of two living species of large birds. One species, Meleagris gallopavo, commonly known as the Wild Turkey, is native to the forests of North America. The other species, Meleagris ocellata, known as the Ocellated Turkey, is native to the forests of the Yucatán Peninsula.
The domestic turkey is a descendant of the Wild Turkey and features prominently in the Canadian and U.S. holidays of Thanksgiving.
Turkeys are classed in the taxonomic order of Galliformes. Within this order they are relatives of the family Tetraonidae. Turkeys have a distinctive fleshy wattle that hangs from the underside of the beak, and a fleshy protuberance that hangs from the top of its beak called a snood.
With wingspans of 1.5–1.8 metres, the turkeys are by far the largest birds in the open forests in which they live. As with many Galliform species the female is smaller than the male and is much less colorful.
When Europeans first encountered turkeys in the Americas they incorrectly identified the birds as a type of guineafowl, known as Turkey fowl from their importation to Central Europe through Turkey, and that name, shortened to just the name of the country, stuck as the name of the bird.
The confusion between these kinds of birds from related but different families is also reflected in the scientific name for the turkey genus meleagris is Greek for guineafowl. The domesticated turkey is attributed to Aztec agriculture, which addressed one subspecies of Meleagris gallopavo local to the present day states of Jalisco and Guerrero.
The names for M. gallopavo in other languages also frequently reflect its exotic origins, seen from an Old World viewpoint, and add to the confusion about where turkeys actually came from.
The many references to India seen in common names go back to a combination of two factors the genuine belief that the newly discovered Americas were in fact a part of Asia, and second, the tendency during that time to attribute exotic animals and foods to a place that symbolized far off, exotic lands.
The latter is reflected in terms like Muscovy Duck, This was a major reason why the name Turkey fowl stuck to Meleagris rather than to the guinea fowl the Ottoman Empire represented the exotic East.
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