The genus, Theobroma, includes 22 different varieties of plants, but chocolate can only be made from the cocoa beans of Theobroma Cacao L.. Carl von Linné gave cocoa beans their name in 1735, approximately 200 years after Europeans first laid eyes on them. The still have the same name today. Linné termed the genus, “Theobroma”, and the species, “Cacao”. The “L.” stands for Linné.

The word, Theobroma, consists of the two Greek words, “theos” (God), and “broma” (food). In other words he effectively named the cocoa tree, “food of the gods”. The term, “Cacao”, originally comes from, “kakawa”. This, in turn, comes from a prototype of the Mixe-Zoque language, which was used by the Olmecs in Central America. The Olmecs already cultivated the cocoa tree approximately 1000 BC