ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews of the taxonomic classification of the genus Vigna Savi, listing its 141 accepted taxa and their synonyms. It also gives vernacular names in about 210 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 13 tables and 1 painting representing a possible evolution of one of the Niger-Congo proto-words associated with this taxon.
