Seeds are the reproductive unit of flowering plants. Legumes belong to the Fabaceae (or Leguminosae) family and produce seeds within pods. This group includes peas, lentils, chickpeas, peanuts, soybeans, and beans. This last subset of legumes, beans, includes black beans, kidney beans, pinto beans, and navy beans. But often people use beans, seeds, and legumes as synonyms. Other seeds are described in a different post.
Beans
There are lots of different names in Spanish, check out their origins on our El Atlas page.
The origin of the most widespread word for bean remains somewhat of a mystery, but it is often traced back to Greek (φασόλια, phasólia) or Latin phaseolus. Over the centuries, this evolved into Portuguese feijão, and spread to other languages, such as Czech fazole and Ukrainian кавсоля (kavsolia).
In English, Phaseolus is used primarily in scientific contexts, while the common term is bean—a word that resembles those in other Germanic languages, such as Dutch boon, German Bohne, and Icelandic baun (all of them came from Proto-Germanic baunō). Despite this shared terminology, the term bean applies to many different species. In this case, we are focusing on Phaseolus vulgaris, the common bean.
If the Proto-Germanic baunō derives from the Proto-Indo-European root bʰabʰ-, then bean may be cognate with other terms such as Spanish haba and Galician faba (from Proto-Italic faba), as well as Bulgarian боб (bob) (from Proto-Slavic babu).
Chickpeas
The etymology of the word “chickpea” might seem to result from a combination of “chick” and “pea,” but it actually traces its origins to the Old French pois chiche, which means “pea chickpea”. The root of the word ultimately derives from the Latin cicer, which is also the source for terms in various languages such as Italian ceci, Polish ciecierzyca, and csicseri in the Hungarian word csicseriborsó. However, this linguistic pattern is not universal. In much of Eastern Europe, the words for chickpea originate from Middle Eastern, specifically the Persian term نخود (noxod).
Chickpeas, also known as garbanzo beans. The Spanish name garbanzo, and the Brazilian Portuguese term gravanço has an unknown origin, but two main theories attempt to explain its roots. One theory suggests that garbanzo has a pre-Roman Iberian origin. The second theory, it may have derived from the Proto-Germanic term arwīts, meaning “pea.”
They are a staple ingredient in various cuisines, featuring prominently in Mediterranean dishes like falafel and hummus. The latter, a globally popular dish, derives its name from the Arabic word حُمُّص (ḥummuṣ), which translates to “chickpea.”
Lentils
Slavic languages show a deep divide in the terms used for lentils, with northern Slavs favoring words derived from Proto-Slavic *sočivo, while the southern group primarily uses *lęťa. The latter term, *lęťa, is connected to other European linguistic roots, such as Latin lenticula (a diminutive of lens), and is closely related to terms in Germanic languages. Interestingly, this Slavic term, *lęťa, gained popularity beyond Non-Slavic-speaking regions, like Hungarian (Lencse) and Latvian (lēca), which was later adopted by Estonian. This is just one example of the many linguistic borrowings shown on the map: French lentille to English lentil, Swedish lins to Finnish linssi, and Old Armenian ոսպն (ospn) to Georgian ოსპი (osṗi).
Peas
Romans borrowed from the Greek πίσον (píson), however, it was their Latin term “pisum” that spread around the Mediterranean coast. They also referred to it as “evillia,” a word strikingly similar to the Germanic term, like the German “Erbse” or the Dutch “Erwt.” Are they cognates? Maybe.
In the East, the Proto-Balto-Slavic languages often share a common root. However, in this case, the Baltic languages share their root with the Finnic languages, while the Slavic languages use “gorxъ.” A similar situation occurs in Turkish, which adopted the Latin term via Italian, rather than using the Turkic word “burčak” (originally used for both beans and peas). Hungarians, on the other hand, did adopt it.
Despite the biological differences, the names of legumes are often interchangeable and sometimes confused. For instance, the Persian word نخود (noxod) and Spanish “chícharo” originally referred to chickpeas, among another three terms: Have a look at the Spanish language map on peas.
