The name avocado comes all the way from the Aztec civilization. In Nahuatl, the language the Aztecs spoke, the fruit was called ahuacatl — a word that also referred to a part of the body, the testicle. The resemblance, it is said, came from the way the fruit hung in pairs from the branches. When the Spanish arrived in Mexico in the 16th century, they reshaped this hard-to-pronounce word into the more familiar aguacate, and later avocado. Curiously, avocado sounded close to the Spanish word for "lawyer" (abogado), and the two were sometimes confused. So, passing through several languages, the name we know today finally took hold.