What was named Turkey first, the country or bird?

Well, Turks were called the people who used to live in the Ottoman empire which existed between 1300-1922. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire due to the loss in the World War 1, the empire was dissolved the Republic of Turkey came into existence.

However, the bird name "Turkey" is a native American bird most commonly found in the central Americas. The story behind the naming of the bird is quite interesting and goes like this, the first one to find the bird were the merchants from Turkey and hence it was named after them.

Turkey was a country first. The bird got its name from the country. The region which was inhabited by the Turks was called Turkey. But what is astonishing is how a North American bird got its name from a country straddling Eastern Europe and Western Asia.

There is an interesting story behind that. The Turks imported a bird called Guinea Fowl to the European countries. The Europeans found the bird to be awful looking and tasting. Sometime later the Spanish imported a bird from North America to Europe. The bird resembled the Turkish bird Guinea Fowl in terms of how it looked and tasted. So because the North American bird looked similar to the ‘Turkish bird’, the Europeans decided to call it Turkey.