h supplies an exact parallel in
"parsnep" which, though representing the Latin "pastinaca" through the
Old French "pastenaque", was first assimilated in the last syllable to
the "nep" of "turnep" ("pasneppe" in Elizabethan English), and later had
an "r" introduced into the first syllable, apparently on the analogy of
"parsley".

The turkey on the other hand seems never to be found with its original
American name. In England, as the name implies, the turkey cock was
regarded as having come from the land of the Turks. The bird no doubt
spread over Europe from the Italian seaports. The mistake, therefore,
was not unnatural, seeing that these towns conducted a great trade
with the Levant, while the fact that America when first discovered was
identified with India helped to increase the confusion. Thus in French
the "coq d'Inde" was abbreviated to "d'Inde" much as "turkey cock" was
to "turkey"; the next stage was to identify "dinde" as a feminine word
and create a new "dindon" on the analogy of "chapon" as the masculine.
In Italian the name "gallo d'India" besides survives, while in German
the name "Truthahn" seems to be derived onomatopoetically from
the bird's cry, though a dialectic "Calecutischer Hahn" specifies
erroneously an origin for the bird from the Indian Calicut. In the
Spanish "pavo", on the other hand, there is a curious confusion with
the peacock. Thus in these names for objects of common knowledge,
the introduction of which into Europe can be dated with tolerable
definiteness, we see evinced the methods by which in remoter ages
objects were named. The words were borrowed from the community whence
came the new object, or the real or fancied resemblance to some known
object gave the name, or again popular etymology might convert the
unknown term into something that at least approached in sound a
well-known word.

"The Origin of Species" had not long been published when the parallelism
of development in natural species and in languages struck investigators.
At the time, one of the foremost German philologists was August
Schleicher, Professor at Jena. He was himself keenly interested in the
natural sciences, and amongst his colleagues was Ernst Haeckel, the
protagonist in Germany of the Darwinian theory. How the new ideas struck
Schleicher may be seen from the following sentences by his colleague
Haeckel. "Speech is a physiological function of the human organism,
and has been developed simultaneously with its o