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[Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>]

The early etymology of "faba" is interesting.  To account for Russian 
"bob" linguists postulate a reduplicated form [bhabha*].  It even obeys 
a rule of Indo-European phonetics: when two aspirated sounds like [bh] 
occur in successive syllables, the second loses its aspiration.  So this 
accounts for why we don't see Latin [fafa], since the form it descended 
from was actually [bhaba*], and only the aspirated [bh] becomes Latin 
[f].  The sounds [b] and [bh] merge in Slavic to become [b], accounting 
for Russian "bob".

I began to doubt the Greek origin of Italian "fagiolo" at one point, 
wondering why it couldn't just be some homegrown Roman word like 
[fabiolus].  I looked in the Roman cookbook by Apicius, and it cleared 
everything up.  He calls dry favas "fabae" of course, and uses 
"fabaciae" (compare Spanish "habichuela" from [fabakiola*]) for green 
favas.  He praises the "fabaciae" from Baia, in the province of 
Campania, for what I presume must be their especially large size; I 
doubt folks took large favas for granted back then.  Separate recipes 
call for "phaseoli" (translated as green string beans).  The 
translator's note says they're kidney beans, but to anyone's knowledge 
this cannot be so.  It must refer to the form of fava beans we haven't 
discussed yet: the small tender pods.  Apparently the custom of eating 
them this way did come from Greece (there's a parallel here with sweet 
corn vs. dry corn, where more affluent farmers can afford to harvest 
their crops as early tender vegetables, instead of waiting for the 
starchy staple crop).  Fava pods must be really young or they become 
spongy.  They remind me a little of roses in aroma.  The Romans made a 
dish called "conchiclum" in which large dry favas are cooked and 
skinned, and mixed with separately cooked fava pods, much like a modern 
3-bean salad.

The key to understanding the derivation of Spanish "frijol", Portuguese 
"feijoa" and French "flageolet" is that they're all derived from the 
Vulgar Latin form fajol-*, from "fasioli" ("phaseoli").  It was 
pronounced with a [j] sound just like Italian "fagiolo" today.  It's 
often true that the Vulgar Latin word is exactly like the present-day 
Italian word.  It's very easy to insert an [r] sound into the syllable 
[fa] because the front part of the tounge doesn't do anything.  Many 
Spanish words end in "-e" where Italian has an "-o".  And so the first 
uniquely Spanish pronunciation was frajole*.  The rest of the sound 
changes that follow have parallels in many other words: frajole* > 
fraijole* > frejole* > frijol (with the accent always on the [o]).  The 
[j] sound softens a century or two eariler than the same process in 
French, pronounced as in "vision" around the time of El Cantar de Mio 
Cid, the classic work in Old Spanish.  Later, the Spanish "j" merged 
with "x" (pronounced "sh") to become the modern guttural sound.  A shift 
in meaning also occurred where [fajol-*] seems to refer to green shelled 
favas, replacing the old word "fabaciae" (later expanding to mean any 
cooked bean dish made from the seeds).  The edible pods came to be 
referred to with diminutives like "flageolet" and "fagiolini" and 
"habichuelas".

I keep forgetting to mention my favorite form of favas of all.  And 
they're the easiest to prepare.  Large dry favas are soaked until almost 
sprouting and then deep-fried until crisp, like Corn-Nuts.  I've had 
these from the Chinese market, with no seasoning, and from the Mexican 
market (with salt and chile, but I could have made better).  They're 
preserved and ready to eat, and there's no bother with all that 
skinning.  The crispy brown skins add to the crackly crunch.

Bill
S. Oregon coast