The hypothesis about the origin of the name Cocumola are two. The presence of fogge, a sort of store-shaped funnel upside down, with a mouth hold, just to allow a man to man entry into the Latin word cumulus would think with the meaning of the collection, storage, barn. More likely, the name derives from another Latin word, cucuma, that is assuming that small clay pot in the country in the past there were workshops dedicated to the production of pottery. In documents of the seventeenth century appears as Cocumella.

The territory of Cocumola has been inhabited since ancient times as evidenced by the numerous dolmens and menhirs existing on site: dolmen Monte Culumbu and two menhirs Croce and Pizzilonghi-Urpinara.

In the period messapico here there was a deposit of crop products, built by digging in calcareous soil the styles, which are present in the center of the country and there are about roughly a hundred.

It was definitely colonized by the Greeks, and later came under Roman rule. Undoubted
therefore, the presence in Cocumola of people Messapians, the Romans and then later the Byzantines, Normans and Angevins. The Byzantines would have left traces of their passage with a greek rite church dedicated to St. George.

Around the sixteenth century, became a house with the name of St. Joannis of Cocumola was equipped with a tower guarding the access routes to the sea after the incursions of the Saracens in Salento. The round tower, of which there remain only the foundations, was demolished in the early years of the twentieth century and with this the Mother Church was enlarged in 1906.

Several were families who had held the fief of Cocumola over the centuries.

First were the feudal lords Sangiovanni who obtained directly from the farmhouse King Guglielmo II. In 1277 the estate descend into two portions, one of which remains in the family Sangiovanni, the other, with the name of Cocumola, arrives in the family Sambiasi. The two units will be merged only in the seventeenth century. The portion of the Cocumola followed one another Venturi, the Gualtieri, the Ruiz De Castro and finally, in 1786 the Rossi who remained until 1806, the year of subversion of feudalism.

[www.comune.minervino.le.it] - [Wikipedia]