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Color or Fruit? The Unlikely Etymology of “Orange”
- eboyjr 8y agoOrange you glad that etymological histories are studied so in depth?
- iovrthoughtthis 8y agoThank you.
- NihilumExNil 8y agoCut it out. I think it could be better. A lot of oversees development has not been documented well and "studied" on an ad-hoc basis. The incorrect division of Italian "(n)arancia" is debatable, as the similarity to e.g. Lt. aur(um), French or - gold might be completely intentional.
- drfuchs 8y agoThey left out the best part: The use of the word "redhead," for people with hair that is decidedly orange rather than red, predates the emergence of the color name "orange." Otherwise, they would presumably have been called "orangeheads."
- yellowapple 8y agoAnother factor there might be that "redhead" rolls off the tongue quite a bit better.
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- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoI'm sure you can find some sort of rhyme that'll work just as well.
- jessaustin 8y agoFor "orange"? Could you suggest a rhyme?
- xefer 8y agoFinding a rhyme for orange is as annoying as a squeaky door 'inge
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- Bellerophon 8y agoOh danger, orange, her hair may be, by the manger, quite, orange she sees, the fire burns bright, the ranger, he schemes, in death she finds evil Sir Granger's deeds.
- cgearhart 8y agoIt's not as absurd as it may seem. Eminem discussed the topic at one point, although I don't think any of them would fit the bill as a replacement for "redhead": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPcR5RVXHMg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPcR5RVXHMg
- stochastic_monk 8y agoThe trick is that assonance is sufficient for rap in contrast to a strictly true rhyme.
- rory096 8y agoFrom the video description: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sporange https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sporange
- nvr219 8y agoporridge
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- petecox 8y agoNot as well as ginger ninja or fanta pants. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KVN_0qvuhhw https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KVN_0qvuhhw
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- kmm 8y agoSimilarly, the birds called redbreasts, whose chests are orange as well
- stochastic_monk 8y agoA robin orangebreast in a cage Puts all heaven in a rage simply doesn’t have the same punch.
- senthil_rajasek 8y ago"possibly derived from an even older Dravidian (another ancient language spoken in what is now southern India) root, naru, meaning fragrant. " The Dravidian language referred here is Tamil. The fruit in the citrus family is called Narthangai. The unripe fruit makes a sour delicious pickle. It's such a joy to hear a Tamil word used everyday around the globe.
- ap3 8y agoRead all the way through, didn’t know it would end up at a Tamil word as the origin of naranja
- iamshs 8y agoI am wondering why didn't the word percolate to Punjabi language where we call the colour as "santri" and the fruit is called "santra". Hindi has the same word for it, I think.
- msravi 8y agoOr to Kannada, where the fruit is called "kittaLe", despite also being classified a Dravidian language. Kannada and Telugu in general seem to have too many differences from Tamil and Malayalam to be lumped into a common bucket. The color has always been referred to as "kesari" in Kannada, and translates to saffron.
- lgessler 8y ago> The Dravidian language referred here is Tamil. The "even older Dravidian [language]" referred to in the article is not exactly Tamil. The oldest written evidence we have for Old Tamil[1] dates to the 3rd century BC[2]. But we're told that this word is in Sanskrit's vocabulary, which was already developed well before then. (Some people date the Vedas to the 15th century BC.) That means it probably didn't come from Tamil, and instead came from some other, older Dravidian language. That might be Proto-Dravidian, the common ancestor of all Dravidian languages (Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, etc.), or some other ancient Dravidian language that we don't have a record of. (That seems likely, because that's generally how other Dravidian words in Sanskrit are thought to have gotten there: Skt. फल (phala) 'fruit' is thought to have been borrowed from Proto-Dravidian *palam, which has descended into Tamil பழம் (paḻam), Malayalam പഴം (paḻaṃ), etc.) Some English words actually are directly from Tamil, though. Curry[3] and mango[4] are both directly from Tamil. [1]: Old Tamil is actually quite different from Modern Tamil, but let's not get into that [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Tamil_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Tamil_language [3]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/curry#Etymology_1 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/curry#Etymology_1 [4]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mango#Etymology https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mango#Etymology
- mynegation 8y agoI think this color survey from xkcd is very interesting https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/ https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/
- 0x0 8y agoInterestingly, in Dutch, the word is "Appelsien" according to Wikipedia, which seems quite unrelated to any word like "Orange" - this in a country where the royal family is called "House of Orange"?
- schoen 8y agoThis is from a tendency in Germanic languages (and maybe others) to call the orange a "Chinese apple".
- feulix 8y agoThe word "sinaasappel" is much more common, which sounds a lot more like the Chinese apple you're referring to than "appelsien". The latter is used in a brand name for fruit juice (used to be exclusively orange juice). Besides that it's practically not used in modern Dutch.
- irishsultan 8y agoBoth sinaasappel and appelsien are derived from chinese apple (from dutch wikipedia: De sinaasappel komt oorspronkelijk uit China (in de oude vorm: Sina), waar ook de naam naar verwijst. In het vroegnieuwnederlands komt "appel sina" voor, in het nieuwnederlands "appelsien"). (Also in flemish appelsien is used far more than sinaasappel).
- nisse72 8y agoIn Swedish as well. The fruit is apelsin. The colour is traditionally brandgul (fire yellow) but orange (pronounced like in french?) is not uncommon.
- chlvsl 8y agoRussian as well. It's from silk road merchants calling oranges "chinese apples".
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- nwatson 8y agoFTA: "His orange exists only to brighten up tawny, a dark brown." Almost like orange-is-to-brown as pink-is-to-red. This is more apparent when looking at http://colorizer.org/ http://colorizer.org/ and choosing HSV colorspace with H==34, S==80, and varying V==[20,90]. EDIT: reverse pink/red.
- wyldfire 8y agoOther interesting rebracketing/juncture loss: an napron => an apron a nauger => an auger a nadder => an adder And there's probably a bunch more for future centuries [1]. [1] https://eggcorns.lascribe.net/ https://eggcorns.lascribe.net/
- XaspR8d 8y agoOne of my favorite cases of reanalysis gone amok is: [(xocalia + a'tl) => chocola-tl => chocolate => choco-] + [(al-kuhl => alcohol) + (-ique => -ic) => -holic] => chocoholic which, having contributions from Nahuatl, Arabic, and Latin results in a word with morphemes originating in 3 distinct language families. On the topic of article rebracketing, I also love "an eke-name" (an extra name) becoming "a nickname".
- bonzini 8y agoIn Italian we have the Latin word "luscinia" (nightingale) that became "usignolo". -olo is just a suffix that means small, the interesting part is that at some point people started confusing the initial L for the article l'.
- NihilumExNil 8y ago> an eke-name I'm not buying this. "eke" as "also" may give the sense "by-name", alright. What irks me is the lack of explanation of the rebracketing, which would appear like a mistake. But "nick of time" and the like would make a reanalysis as "short name" plausible, so not a mistake but a funny play of words.
- baddox 8y agoRebracketing also happened a lot when incorporating words from other languages, from a misunderstanding of the other languages (often the misunderstanding occurred first in another language before being borrowed by English). "Alligator" is from Spanish "el lagarto" ("the lizard"). Tons of terms from Arabic include "al," the Arabic word for "the": Alchemy, algorithm, algebra, alfalfa, alkaline, alcohol, alcove. Rebracketing also leads to some interesting affix/root usage: The root of "cybernetics" is "cybern," but "cyber" is frequently used to form related words. "Helicopter" comes from "helix" ("spiral") and "pteron" ("wing"), but it is generally split into "heli"/"helo" and "copter" for the formation of related words.
- ap3 8y agoInteresting that yellow red was used to describe the color of a fox Is that why gold fish are called gold fish - and not orange fish?
- shawabawa3 8y agoProbably because they're more reflective, like gold
- jacobwilliamroy 8y agoIn arabic the both the noun and adjectives for "orange" roughly transliterates to "bortuqal": برتقالي What's the word for "Portugal" in arabic? "bortughal" (that is also not a good transliteration) برتغال Arabic is my favorite.
- jacquesm 8y agoPortocaliu is orange in Romanian.
- schoen 8y agoWiktionary confirms that the name of the fruit came from the name of the country: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D8%A8%D8%B1%D8%AA%D9%82%D8%A7%D9%84#Etymology https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D8%A8%D8%B1%D8%AA%D9%82%D8%A... (via Greek, via Venetian!)
- JohnicBoom 8y agoOh, cool. It's the same in Greek: πορτοκάλι = Portokali = Orange Πορτογαλία = Portogalia = Portugal
- cagataygurturk 8y agoIn Turkish, orange is called „Portakal“. Reason is, this fruit was introduced to Ottoman soil by Portuguese sailors. Probably Turkish people heard the name first from North African Arabs living in Ottoman Empire, and they started to use this word.
- jug 8y agoKind of the same concept as in Swedish with ”apelsin” for orange (the fruit). apel + sin = Apple from China.
- tk75x 8y agoI was reading comments to see if anybody mentioned the Russian words for orange color and fruit. "apelsin" is the word for the fruit and must have come over from Western Europe but the word for the color is "oranzhevuy" which is just "naranj" with the adjective suffix.
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- edgarvaldes 8y agoI find it great that "naranja" (the spanish name) is so close, almost identical, to the sanskrit "naranga"
- lostlogin 8y ago“... a successful cosmetics company today does sell a lipstick color it creepily calls Underage Red.” Wow. And the company defends it as a “feminine rebellion”. I couldn’t make it though the post but the link is below. https://m.facebook.com/katvond/posts/10155445610990454:0 https://m.facebook.com/katvond/posts/10155445610990454:0
- sverige 8y agoInteresting that the name of the House of Orange had nothing to do with the fruit or the color. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A3cHzFQsqI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A3cHzFQsqI
- machiavelli1024 8y agoIt’s pretty simple in Hungarian. The orange fruit is called “narancs”, while the color is “naracssárga” (“narancs” + “sárga”, where “sárga” means yellow).
- pakl 8y agoDoesn’t it seem plausible that “orange” rather comes from Latin aurantium based on the root aurum for gold? (Gold can appear orange-colored.)
- rockinghigh 8y agoYes, the transition from narange to orange may come from the French “or” (gold). More here: https://www.etymonline.com/word/orange https://www.etymonline.com/word/orange
- dredmorbius 8y ago"Orange pekoe" turns out to have a fairly delightfully obscure etymology as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_leaf_grading#Orange_pekoe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_leaf_grading#Orange_pekoe
- kalleboo 8y agoInteresting that English was lacking this word for so long. Swedish has the word "brandgul" ("fire-yellow") which predates the English word orange by a couple of decades and is still in use. Which I guess in Swedish just makes it a variant of yellow instead of it's "own" color. The word "orange" is also used for the color, but not for the fruit (which is "apelsin")
- OJFord 8y agoReally interesting, but I thought this was a bit weak: > Alexander the Great dressed in robes, some “of crimson, some of purple, some of murrey, and some of orange colour velvet.” The translator is confident that “murrey” will be identifiable—it is a reddish purple, the color of mulberries—but he needs to add the noun “colour” after “orange” for its meaning to be clear. I would read that as a list of things, each of which is a colour of velvet.
- firic 8y ago> Often they referred to oranges as “golden apples.” That is how the fruit "orange" is called in modern Hebrew