ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the taxonomic classification of the genus Vicia L., listing its 180 accepted taxa and their synonyms. It also gives vernacular names in about 110 languages of nearly all ethnolinguistic families of the world. The second section is a set of etymological analyses attempting to explain the origin of the popular names and their mutual relatedness, as well as interactions between individual language families. This chapter includes 22 tables and 1 painting representing a possible evolution of one of the Indo-European proto-words associated with this taxon.
