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Red paprika originated in Southern Mexico, Central America, and the Antilles Islands, where Native Americans used it for healing and seasoning. Christopher Columbus returned from the New World with unknown spices with a never-before-seen present: a paprika plant. At first, the plants were used to decorate baroque gardens of nobility in Europe. The plant also arrived in Turkey via trade routes.

From there it came to Hungary through the Balkans. In the second half of the 16th century, Margit Széchy, a noble lady already had a plant in her garden called the Turkish pepper (at that time also called Indian pepper or heathen pepper). The name ‘paprika’ came from the 18th Century as a diminutive form for the south-slavic name of pepper (papar), then after the Hungarian usage, the word became international and universal. The first note mentioning red pepper in Szeged dates back to 1748, the word paprika stood in an account book.

In Hungary, paprika was first used as a cure for intermittent fever, it later became a typical spice of Hungarian cooking.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the English word comes from the Hungarian "paprika," which means 'pepper' (the red spice or the vegetable). This derives from the Serbian and Croatian "paprena" that means "the one that is hot" and it is derived from Serbian and Croatian noun papar, "pepper", which in turn was borrowed from the Latin "piper", for "pepper."