celery and parsley

Celery and parsley have an odd history.

The Greek’s called parsley, selinon, and that continued through Latin into Italian where is became seleri.  Somewhere along the way the name probably began to refer to the vegetable celery, probably when the French began calling it sceleri d’Italie or parsely of Italy. They shortened it to céleri. That’s where we got our name.

Instead of an Italian celery, we have an Italian parsley. That’s how we name the flat leaf variety to contrast it with curly leaf parsley.  Our name comes from the same Greek selinon source. But they named it petroselinon or rock parlsey. Petro means rock, as petriolium means oil from rock. It travels through Latin to French and also gets shortened, in this case to peresil.