ABSTRACT

This chapter reviews the taxonomic classification of the genus Cajanus Adans., listing its 40 accepted taxa and their synonyms. It also gives vernacular names in about 130 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. The chapter is accompanied with 1 table and 1 painting representing a possible evolution of one of the Dravidian proto-words associated with this taxon.