ABSTRACT

This chapter reviews the taxonomic classification of the genus Ervum L., listing its 9 accepted taxa, along with 119 related ones, and their synonyms. It also gives vernacular names in about 40 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 one table and one painting representing a possible evolution of one of the Indo-European proto-words associated with this taxon.