What are “gocciole” in Italian, and why is the name everywhere?

This family hunts the kitchen for le gocciole — chocolate-chip cookies. Gocciole (“little drops,” from goccia, drop) is actually the brand name Mulino Bianco gave its cookies dotted with chocolate chips — but Italians say it the way English speakers say “Kleenex”: as the everyday word for the cookie itself, whatever the actual box on the shelf says.

The name became so generic that Italian courts later ruled the round chocolate-and-sugar-star cookie shape and description could no longer be exclusively protected — other brands were free to make their own “gocciole-style” cookies. The name stuck to the snack, not just the box.