Why Is Arugula Called ‘Rocket’ Outside the U.S.?

This article is part of our Cocktail Chatter series, where we dive into the wild, weird, and wondrous corners of history to share over a cocktail and impress your friends.

Arugula is a leafy green with character. It’s peppery and slightly nutty with a kick of mustard-like spice, and despite its bold profile — as far as greens go — arugula proves to be versatile with countless culinary applications. It shines on sandwiches, makes a great pizza topping, and functions as the base for myriad seasonal salads, whether it’s a balsamic, cherry tomato, and parmesan salad in the summer or one dolled up with walnuts, dried cranberries, and blue cheese in the winter.

But unbeknownst to many Americans, in every other English-speaking country around the world, the plant goes by a different name: rocket. Although it’s a rather strange etymological divide, the story behind it is actually quite straightforward. It all traces back to an international and multigenerational game of telephone that began over 2,000 years ago.

The leafy green is indigenous to the Mediterranean. Some of the earliest mentions of the plant by its Latin name, “eruca,” began appearing at the turn of the millennium. In Roman poet Virgil’s first century B.C. poem “Moretum,” he writes “et Venerem revocans eruca morantem,” which loosely translates to “the eruca revives drowsy Venus (the Roman goddess of love, beauty, fertility and desire).”

Fellow Roman writer Pliny the Elder echoed this sentiment in his 77 A.D. work “Historia Naturalis.” As such, arugula was often considered an aphrodisiac in ancient times, and “eruca” translates directly to “caterpillar” in English. This could either be a cheeky nod to its libido-boosting effects or — just as likely — it could be a reference to the fact that cabbage worms, a type of caterpillar, are common pests that absolutely love eating it. Regardless, every name for the green ultimately stems from this Latin root.

As the plant made its way north over the next few centuries, the name “eruca” got filtered through a number of Romance languages and their respective regional dialects. In southern Italy, the name morphed into both “aruculu” and “rucola,” the latter being the Italian word for “rocket.”

In northern Italy, the plant adopted the name “ruchetta.” From there, this term (and the plant) eventually worked its way over the Alps and into France where it became known as “roquette,” or “rocket” in English. And by the 16th century, “roquette” arrived in the British Empire. The name transformed to “rocket,” and the term gradually traveled over to Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.

While the name came over to the States, too, after the nation declared independence from the British Empire, both the plant and the term “rocket” fell into obscurity. But back in Italy, the leafy green maintained ubiquity over the centuries, and when the U.S. saw an influx of Italian immigrants in the late 1800s, they brought their cuisine and terminology with them.

Given that the majority of these immigrants hailed from southern Italy, “aruculu” and “rucola” became the most commonly used terms for the green stateside in the early 20th century. Over the next few decades, the two words gradually morphed together, and with the addition of a little American English filtration, the word “arugula” was born. By the 1990s, arugula began to gain popularity outside of Italian American communities, becoming a trendy green in U.S. cuisine. Since then, it’s transcended from trend to staple in our food culture as “arugula,” while it continues to go by “rocket” overseas.

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