The name of the potato exhibits greater variety. The English name was borrowed from the Spanish "patata", which was itself borrowed from a native word for the "yam" in the dialect of Hayti. The potato appeared early in Italy, for the mariners of Genoa actively followed the footsteps of their countryman Columbus in exploring America. In Italian generally the form "patata" has survived. The tubers, however, also suggested a resemblance to truffles, so that the Italian word "tartufolo", a diminutive of the Italian modification of the Latin "terrae tuber" was applied to them. In the language of the Rhaetian Alps this word appears as "tartufel". From there it seems to have passed into Germany where potatoes were not cultivated extensively till the eighteenth century, and "tartufel" has in later times through some popular etymology been metamorphosed into "Kartoffel". In France the shape of the tubers suggested the name of earth-apple (pomme de terre), a name also adopted in Dutch (aard-appel), while dialectically in German a form "Grumbire" appears, which is a corruption of "Grund-birne", "ground pear". (Kluge "Etymologisches Worterbuch der deutschen Sprache" (Strassburg), s.v. "Kartoffel".) Here half the languages have adopted the original American word for an allied plant, while others have adopted a name originating in some more or less fanciful resemblance discovered in the tubers; the Germans alone in Western Europe, failing to see any meaning in their borrowed name, have modified it almost beyond recognition. To this English 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.