The English word parsley derives from a complex transmission chain that begins with Greek petroselinon, a compound meaning rock celery. The Greek word combines petros (rock, stone) and selinon (celery, parsley). The plant was so named because wild parsley (Petroselinum crispum) grows readily in rocky, stony soils throughout the Mediterranean basin, its native range.
The Greek compound entered Latin as petroselinum, which in the everyday speech of the late Roman Empire was shortened and altered to various forms, including *petersilium and *petrocilium. These Vulgar Latin forms produced Old French peresil (modern French persil), Old English petersilie (borrowed directly from Latin, probably through monastic horticulture), and German Petersilie (preserving the Peter- element more faithfully). The modern English parsley represents a further simplification of the word, with the initial petro-/peres- element worn down to pars- through centuries of phonological erosion.
The first element, petros, is a common Greek word meaning rock or stone. It is familiar as the source of the name Peter (from Aramaic Kepha, translated into Greek as Petros by Jesus according to the Gospel of Matthew), as well as English words like petrify (to turn to stone), petroleum (rock oil), and petrology (the study of rocks). The PIE source is reconstructed as *per- or *petra, though some scholars consider the Greek word a pre-Indo-European borrowing from a Mediterranean substrate language.
The second element, selinon, is more problematic. It denoted celery or parsley in Greek (the ancients did not always distinguish sharply between the two related plants), and it may also be of pre-Greek origin. The word gave its name to the ancient Greek colony of Selinunte (Selinus) in southwestern Sicily, founded around 628 BCE, which adopted the celery leaf as its civic emblem and struck it on its coinage. The city was one of the most prosperous Greek settlements in the western Mediterranean
The relationship between parsley and celery is both botanical and etymological. Both plants belong to the family Apiaceae (the carrot or umbellifer family). Celery (Apium graveolens) derives its English name from French celeri, from Italian seleri, from Latin selinum, from the same Greek selinon. Parsley and celery thus share a Greek root word
Parsley has been cultivated for at least 2,000 years, initially more for medicinal and ceremonial purposes than culinary ones. The ancient Greeks associated parsley with death and used it to adorn tombs and make funeral wreaths. Winners at the Nemean Games (one of the four great Panhellenic athletic festivals) received wreaths of wild parsley, in contrast to the olive wreaths of Olympia and the laurel wreaths of Delphi. The Romans were among the first
The word parsley appears in English from the 14th century onward, with Middle English forms including persely, parsely, and persil. The variety of spellings reflects the word's dual entry into English — partly through Old English (from Latin, via monastic gardens) and partly through Anglo-Norman French. The modern spelling was fixed by the 16th century.
In folk belief, parsley was notoriously difficult to grow from seed, and many superstitions clustered around its cultivation. The saying that parsley seed goes to the devil and back seven times before it sprouts reflects the genuinely slow and irregular germination of parsley seeds, which can take three to four weeks. Transplanting parsley was considered unlucky in some English folk traditions.