ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews of the taxonomic classification of the genus Lathyrus L., listing its 202 accepted taxa and their synonyms. It also gives vernacular names in about 90 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 23 tables and 1 painting representing a possible evolution of one of the Indo-European proto-words associated with this taxon.
