They're surely marketing "habas peladas" these days.When playing Scrabble in Mexico when I was a kid I found that the other kids did not know the word "haba" (which I only knew from a dictionary). Their big sister had to explain it to them.
While the word 'haba' isn't in common use, the word 'habena' (little bean) is. The words 'haba' and 'habena' refer to all types of beans, not just favas.
Many Latin words that begin with 'f' changed to 'h' in Spanish while remaining 'f' in the other Romance languages.I knew I wrote something wrong with Lat. "fava" but was a bit bleary eyed. Isn't faba the scientific species name, Vicia faba (vicia = vetch)?
faba = fava = haba
facere = facer = hacer
folia = foil = hoja
ferum = ferro = hiero
etc.
The word 'frijole' is from the genus name of new world beans 'phaseolus' which is derived from the Greek word 'phaselos' (chickpea). It became 'faseolus' in Latin, then 'fesol' in early Spanish. 'Fesol' became 'fresol' then 'frijol'.One day I was meditating on feijoas, flageolets, and fagiolini, and realized there just couldn't be 3 Romance cognates for "frijol" and yet still be Nahuatl. I ran to my Modern Greek grammar and found "phake" translated as lentil, and realized that "phaseolos" was probably its diminutive, the source for all these words. Notice how in French it has the inserted l sound, similar to Spanish.
I would have thought that 'frijole' was just yet another Nahuatl word ending in 'tl' that the Spanish couldn't pronounce. But such is not the case.
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