Bell Peppers Are Called Something Way Different In Other Countries

Tossing a vibrant bell pepper into a dish is a great way to add both a pop of color and a zesty vegetal flavor. These are a rather versatile veggie, capable of being stuffed with savory meat and cheese, diced up and sprinkled into pasta, or sauteed to perfection and used as a topping for tacos, casseroles, and more. Depending on what bell pepper colors you like to use in your meals, you may end up with varying flavors and levels of nutritional value, based on how long you cook them. But that's the great thing about bell peppers — the delicious, vivid variety spanning from red and orange to yellow and green.

If you're doing a bit of traveling and want to find bell peppers to use in your cooking abroad, you might want to learn the different names they go by in other parts of the world. We in the U.S. know them as bell peppers, not because they're somewhat shaped like bells, but because when this sweet variant of spicy peppers was first cultivated, they were actually pretty noisy — "so much so, in fact, that during high winds, maturing bell peppers would startle livestock, causing them to bolt, and would keep villagers awake at night," per Adirondack Almanac. This clapping sound was caused by the stigma that grew inside of peppers before they were re-engineered to be quiet in the early 20th century. The more you know! So, what are bell peppers referred to in other countries?

Across the pond over in the U.K., India, and some Asian countries, bell peppers are referred to by the first half of their species or genus name, Capsicum annuum. Capsicum translates to "bite or gulp" in Greek, but it's also been said to derive from the Latin word "capsa," meaning box or capsule, according to LanguageHat. The same name goes in New Zealand and the land down under.

In Australia, if you're in a grocery store and ask a staff member where you might find "bell peppers," you might be met with a confused look and head scratches. In a viral TikTok video, this is exactly the situation user @kayywuerf described in her experience as an American expat living in Sydney, Australia. Using the word "peppers" could be confused with salt and pepper, or you might get directed to the spicy chilis as the employees try to guess what you mean.

Then you have European countries, many of which call bell peppers "paprika," used as a universal term for all sweet varieties of peppers. So if you're vacationing somewhere like Germany and a friend asks you to grab some paprika from the store, try not to show up with a bottle of the spice instead of peppers. If you didn't already know, paprika in its spice form is made from mild peppers, hence the confusion. Despite these different terms, pepper recipes should turn out just as delicious no matter where you are on the globe.