Thanks; this post is not only interesting but ties together some insights I should have been able to work out myself about why there's no nun in Hodu and why the Pakistani province is called Sindh.
I assume the dageish in the daled of Hodu is because the N was absorbed?
That's what Klein writes.
Remember that Hodu (India) is pronounced HOdu, while Hodu (give thanks!) is pronounced hoDU.
A thought I've just had: this shows the name Hodu must have entered the language at an extremely early, pre-Biblical, possibly even pre-Hebrew stage, for the nd to undergo this transformation along with other nds and nts in the language; otherwise it would have remained as a foreign sound in the language, like, frex, the nd in the name Alexander.
Which means that India must also have been known to the Israelites by name four (or so) thousand years ago, too.
Further thought: Not further than four thousand years ago, as that would antedate the Aryans (Persians) arriving in Persia to bring the form of the name with the h.
In Arabic:
Turkey= Deek (rooster) Habashi (Ethiobian) or Deek Rumi (literally Roman, European)!
Michael - There are a couple of other possibilities. Either Hebrew adopted the name Hodu from language that had already assimilated the nun, or for some reason the N in Hindu was easier to drop than the N in Alexander.
Kevin - And apparently in India, the name of the bird is connected to Portugal!
Michael Grant: the assumption on dating the word's adoption is a bit far-fetched...
Cosmic X: note that we do have the word הודו with penultimate stress, as caused by נסיגה אחורה (pushing back of the accent). That is, we daily pray "הודו לו ברכו שמו" (Ps 100:4) "The turkey is his; bless his name."
Nonetheless, as a result of Ashkenazi stress in Hebrew, הודו is often wrongly pronounced with a penultimate stress, leading to "Turkey is for G-d, for He/it is good." (Ps 118:1)
A bigger mistake is the pronouncing of הוֹדוֹ (his glory) as הוֹדוּ and then often with the wrong stress, and singing out loud "הודוּ על ארץ ושמיים" (Ps 148:13) meaining "Turkey is on the land and in the sky." This may well be another interpretation of "שש בבוקר הודו באוויר"...
(I tried to put a meteg under some of those הs to indicate stress, but Haloscan wouldn't let me....)
"Turkey is for G-d, for He/it is good."
Are you sure it's not "India is for God."?
I heard that the names in various languages for the bird known in English as "Turkey" come from what signifies the exotic in that culture. Hence, India was a choice for many languages.
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