The plant gets its name from the Latin “fritillus”. It means a dice cup, which refers to the shape of the flower. The Russian name “hazel grouse” was given for the similarity of the flowers strewn with multi-colored specks with the color of the plumage of the hazel grouse, a forest bird of the Grouse family.

The checkerboard hazel grouse grows throughout Western Europe and in the southeast of the European part of Russia. It was introduced into garden culture at the beginning of the 16th century and is used as an ornamental, food (hazel grouse bulbs are edible) and medicinal plant. In the dictionary, Nikolai Annenkov gives other names for the checkerboard hazel grouse – checker color, corolla, mohnach, kudryavka.