Chickenpox is a word that doesn’t invoke much terror. Unlike the highly fatal smallpox or the dangerously paralytic polio, chickenpox is generally a mild and mostly innocuous childhood illness. Even the multiple etymologies of the word chickenpox tend to reflect its temperature nature. No one knows for sure exactly how this moniker arose, but all the proposed origins have a common theme of describing a non-threatening disease. One widely accepted theory is that the “chicken” part of chickenpox was derived from chickpeas (garbanzo beans). Apparently, someone believed that half of a raw chickpea, being flesh-colored and translucent, resembled the vesicular chickenpox lesions, and coined the name chickenpox to reflect that resemblance. Another speculation is that the word “chicken” is a corruption of the Old English word “gican” which meant “itch”. Thus, chickenpox may originally have been gicanpox or literally the “itching pox”, an apt name for a disease whose rash can be horribly itchy.