The chickpea has nothing to do with young chickens, but it does have something to do with an old lawyer. These small, round legumes have been known as chick-peas or chich-peas since the mid sixteenth century, although before that, dating back to the late fourteenth century, they were known simply as chick, a name borrowed directly from French. The French in turn acquired the name chich from the ancient Romans, who called the nutritious legume deer. It was this Latin plant-name, deer, that inspired the surname Cicero: the Roman orator and lawyer who made that surname famous is said to have acquired his cognomen from a mole the size of a chickpea that one of his ancestors bore. In the eighteenth century, the English mistakenly altered the chich of chich-pea to the more familiar-looking chick. At about the same time in the United States, an alternate name appeared, garbanzo, having been introduced to American English by Spanish settlers. Earlier on, the Spanish had developed the name
garbanzo from an older Spanish word, arvanqo, which derived from the Latin ervum, the name of a leguminous plant similar to the chickpea.
The germination of a leguminous plant, which is larger than a typical pea and usually only one or two are produced in a seedpod. These beans are a basic element in numerous soups and stews found throughout Europe and South America and are considered the “pulsation” of the ancient Hebrews. Furthermore, they are known as ceci in Italian and garbanzos in Spanish.
Chickpeas are an ancient and easy-to-grow bean that is highly nutritious and inexpensive, making them a staple in many of the world’s poorer countries. They have been popular in Mediterranean cuisine since ancient Greek times, and were exported by the Romans as “ceci”. In Spain, they were carried to Latin America where they became known as “garbanzo”. In the United States, they are commonly referred to as either chickpeas or garbanzo beans.