Just as beans have changed little over the last ten centuries, the word bean itself has undergone no radical metamorphosis: bean was first recorded in Old English about one thousand years ago, spelt then as it is now. The word derives from a Germanic source that may be distantly related to the Latin name for beans, faba. Incidentally, this Latin name for beans is the source of the given name Fabian and also of the first half of fava bean, a name that therefore literally means bean bean.