In Turkish, we call it 'chicken translation' or 'tavuk çevirme.' While that normally means rotisserie chicken, a few places badly translated it, and the name stuck for word-for-word.
I still think sometomes about how Döner got its name. I can just picture a German guy walking past a plate of the thin shredded meat, and then asking someone "what is that?" followed by the customer pointing at the rotating meat stack, and the chef shrugging and saying "yeah, it spins."
