According to The True History of Chocolate, by Sophie and Michael Coe, there is a sniggeringly funny reason why we don't call chocolate "cacao," the way its discoverers, the Maya and Aztecs, did: "It is hard to believe that the Spaniards were not thoroughly uncomfortable with a noun beginning with caca [described elsewhere by the book's authors as 'a vulgar or nursery word for feces' in 'most Romance languages'] to describe a thick, dark-brown drink which they had begun to appreciate. They desperately needed some other word, and we would not be at all surprised if it was the learned friars who came up with chocolatl and chocolate."