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Color or Fruit? On the Unlikely Etymology of “Orange” (2018)
- martyvis 6y agoIf you are interested in colours and where many originated and became available and used Victoria Finlay has written a great book called Colour
- bigmattystyles 6y agoThis Tom Scott video is also great. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TtnD4jmCDQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TtnD4jmCDQ It ties languages to color and what they mean respectively, specifically how it can differ depending on the tongue spoken. For instance, in the US, the middle traffic light is called a yellow light whereas in French, it's an orange light. I spent my first few years in France, to this day, those lights are orange to me, even in California.
- andreareina 6y agoIn Japan the go light is called blue. It is bluish, but definitely green to my eyes.
- freddie_mercury 6y agoNothing unique about Japan there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction_in_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction... "In many languages, the colors described in English as "blue" and "green" are colexified, i.e. expressed using a single cover term." It goes on to list several dozen languages that do it.
- namenotrequired 6y agoBrazilians have both words but also draw the line differently than my European eyes do. The so called "Verde mar" is definitely blue to me and my American colleagues
- thaumasiotes 6y agoAs I commented sidethread, I was disturbed -- as an American growing up in America -- that the language always referred to the sea as blue when, if you look at it with your eyes, it's obviously green. Perhaps the sea is greener near Portugal and Brazil inherited the description, in the same way that Americans inherited the description of a blue sea and never bothered to reevaluate it?
- simplicio 6y agoYea, in Vietnamese, blue is "blue-green like the sea" and green is "blue-green like a leaf", presumably a call-back to before the two colors were linguistically distinguished.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago> blue is "blue-green like the sea" Hmm. In contrast, it always bothered me that English idioms referred to the sea as blue when you can go look at it and it's a deep green. (Formative experiences of seeing what color the sea is took place in the Bay Area.)
- simplicio 6y agoInterestingly, trying to figure out what color Homer meant by his commonly used phrase "the wine-dark sea" was one of the things that led people to realize the links between language and color discussed in the article. While the colors of the ocean and wine look pretty different to us, its apparently common in other languages to group them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine-dark_sea_(Homer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine-dark_sea_(Homer)
- alisonkisk 6y agoThe green of an rgb monitor and the "forest" green of photosynthesis are pretty different, and it's kind of weird they are the same in English.
- mywittyname 6y agoThey are the same color, just with different brightness levels. If you make a table with RGB values: #00FF00, #008800, #004400, and #000000, you'll see the "lime" green move more towards a forest green. You're not adding other colors, just reducing the intensity of the color. Blue is pretty similar. The #0000FF blue is pretty different from a nice #000044 navy blue.
- TylerE 6y agoOlder incandescent traffic lights were _really_ green. The newer LED lights are much more blue-tinted.
- DanBC 6y agoIn the UK it was mixed. Different people made the coloured glass lenses, and some of the manufacturers had more blue in the lens. This was an attempt to colour correct the yellow light given off by some incandescent lamps.
- Xixi 6y agoThe way I was taught is that ao (青) covers all shades of blue and green, although depending on context its meaning can be limited to blue. So for instance if both ao (青) and midori (緑) are used to designate sports teams, then the ao (青) team will be the blue team. Due to this ambiguity with the word ao (青) it's in general better to use a more precise word to specify the shade of blue/green, like koniro (紺色) for deep blue, mizuiro (水色) for light blue, midori (緑) for green, etc.
- mark-r 6y agoI've always been confused by the confusion between yellow and orange. I've had people insist that pumpkins are yellow for example. And Yellow Freight (now YRC) has always had an orange logo.
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- billfruit 6y agoAlso "Bright Earth : Invention of Colour" by Philip Ball.
- mc32 6y agoOrange is light/saturated brown, so maybe they didn’t need a name for it? Isn’t there the adjective burnt orange? (Of course umber) Orange revenge is the closest rime I can think of. Now, on the other hand, oddly[1] some languages[2] use ‘coffee’ for brown. Did they not have the concept of brown? Presumably they had mud and results of the digestive process. [1] I say oddly because the bean is green and the liquid is more or less black unless looked at under light. [2] Couleur Cafe https://genius.com/Serge-gainsbourg-couleur-cafe-lyrics https://genius.com/Serge-gainsbourg-couleur-cafe-lyrics
- bigmattystyles 6y agoEminem famously has 'door hinge'
- lr4444lr 6y agoI came to say this. Also, in classical languages there is a color that is used to describe rust, e.g. "rubigo" in Latin. Also, amber ("electrum"/"electron") was known, and surely the color would have been seen during metal working through sparks. I think the point is that it's generally either experienced in nature as part of leaf oxidation or in the manipulation of heat and fire, not as a longstanding color phenomenon like the eponymous fruit.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago> Also, in classical languages there is a color that is used to describe rust, e.g. "rubigo" in Latin. It seems worth observing that rubigo is pretty transparently related to the Latin word ruber, "red". In fact, where ruber is an adjective, rubigo is a noun, referring not to the color rust but to the substance itself. (And, by metaphorical extension, to any undesirable thing collecting on anything else, such as mold growing on grain, scum growing on your teeth, etc.)
- benibela 6y ago>Also, in classical languages there is a color that is used to describe rust, e.g. "rubigo" in Latin. Such a weird way to have Rust, Ruby and Go in one sentence
- howlgarnish 6y agoBut does anything rhyme with orange? Oh yes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPcR5RVXHMg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPcR5RVXHMg
- jhardy54 6y agoNitpick: I think Eminem only uses near rhymes, but there are a few true rhymes also. https://rhymezone.com/r/rhyme.cgi?Word=orange&typeofrhyme=perfect https://rhymezone.com/r/rhyme.cgi?Word=orange&typeofrhyme=pe...
- peteretep 6y agoHrm, do they count as rhymes if they embed the whole word they’re rhyming with? Also “gorringe” is a real noun. I think the reason nothing rhymes with it is it’s a loan word that the Englishers would have corrupted had it not belonged to the head of state
- markdown 6y ago> Englishers Haven't heard that word used in a very long time.
- howlgarnish 6y ago"Orange" is actually pronounced /oringe/, so "syringe" and "door hinge" sound like true rhymes to me?
- alisonkisk 6y agoThe rhyme has to be from the last accented syllable (otherwise "tinge of fringe in your minge" are rhymes), so syringe isn't, and door hinge only works if you make it a compound word and make hinge unaccented, which means dropping the h. At that point you're in near rhyme territory.
- grzm 6y ago
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoOrange isn't unique. Pink and violet are derived via the same process. I'm always amused by reports on languages with limited color terms because their speakers can always fall back on "color of foo" to describe colors without a dedicated word.
- howlgarnish 6y agoIn many languages the distinction is quite blurred. In Japanese, most color words like 茶色 chairo (brown), 灰色 hairo (gray), 黄色 kiiro (yellow), 紅色 beniiro (crimson/red) incorporate the word "iro" (color), but while the first two are tea-color and ash-color, ki 黄 and beni 紅 now just mean "yellow" and "red" respectively.
- schoen 6y agoIt looks like 黄 and 紅 never had a distinctive non-color meaning (as characters) without 色, so maybe using them without 色 is more a recovery of their historic meanings rather than an invention of a new meaning? (That's just a guess, I especially don't know the roles that written and spoken forms have played in the evolution of these meanings, or whether spoken "ki" and "beni" did or didn't have independent meanings.)
- thaumasiotes 6y agoI can provide some non-native commentary on modern Mandarin Chinese. All color terms are most ordinarily used with 色 ("color"); it is unusual, though possible, to use a color term by itself. It doesn't seem like a big stretch to imagine that this was also true when the terminology was borrowed into Japan from China, and that's why the 色 gets used in Japanese.
- howlgarnish 6y agoI can't claim to be an expert, but this is likely correct. The native Japanese words for color (shiro, kuro, aka, ao, midori etc) don't use the -色/iro suffix.
- xirbeosbwo1234 6y agoOrange is a shade of brown. We have a great many words for "brown", and "brown" is not named in reference to an object.
- Triv888 6y agoAre you suggesting that we should rename all companies named after objects/words?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- adrian_b 6y agoActually it is vice-versa. Brown is a color whose hue is orange and which has low brightness. You can use "orange" to describe a saturated or even a monochromatic color, at any brightness, so orange can be used to describe a color of light. You cannot use "brown" for any color with high brightness, like you cannot use "black" or "gray" for colors with high brightness. Given a brown color, if you increase its brightness, at a certain level it will no longer look brown.
- lolsal 6y agoI am colorblind and the way that you articulated your points really changed my understanding of colors. Thank you.
- willwinger 6y agoThe ancient Dravidian language mentioned in this article is "Tamil" where citrus fruits are associated with the word "narumanam"(fragrance) or "naatram"(bad smell). Narthangai which is a native citrus fruit. But I don't think Orange or Mandarin are local to Southern India.
- Ar-Curunir 6y agoThe language mentioned there is not Tamil, but Proto-Dravidian, a reconstructed ancestor of it. Tamil is younger than Sanskrit (both Classical and Vedic), but Proto-Dravidian is a contemporary of Sanskrit.
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- truthseekr 6y agoNot true. I really hoped that Hacker News folks were careful enough not to repeat the Pro-Aryan propaganda. I never understand why people try to change history. We live in the present where we should strive for equality and not change history to push your agenda Pro-Aryan groups felt threatened that Tamil is a classical language older than Sanskrit and is very much alive unlike Sanskrit. This led them to spread propaganda about Tamil and calling any reference to Tamil before the age of Sanskrit as proto-Dravidian. Even now, you can see the subjugation of Tamil History by the Indian government refusing to research the very important archeological find of Keezhadi. Epigraphic research proves that much of the inscriptions from the Indus valley civilization is in Tamil. This threatens the Pro-Aryan groups for some unknown reason.
- valarauko 6y agoCan you point to a reputable source for the epigraphic claims about the Indus Valley?
- truthseekr 6y agohttp://www.archaeopress.com/ArchaeopressShop/Public/displayProductDetail.asp?id={C6FB96BD-BB88-4FB5-A089-CD78ACC3A218} http://www.archaeopress.com/ArchaeopressShop/Public/displayP...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- simplicio 6y agoHm, Vietnamese has the same word for the color and fruit as well. Since Vietnam is relatively close to the origin of the fruit, I presume they had oranges long before direct European contact. So one wonders if the idea of having the same name for both arose independently in both places, or if Vietnamese didn't have a name for the color until they established trade with Europeans, and decided to follow their lead in using the same name as the fruit?
- fy20 6y agoDoes anyone know why some European languages (notably German) have different words for the fruit "apfelsine" and the colour "orange"? In German they are mostly interchangeable (as I understand), but some languages still have the distinction. There is actually a native plant 'sea buckthorn' with fruits that are very orange coloured. It is rather common in some parts of Europe. What colour was this called before 'orange'?
- DonaldFisk 6y agoIt derives from "Chinese apple".
- htgb 6y agoIn Swedish, apelsin and orange are distinct and not interchangeable. Sibling comment about Chinese apple seems credible to me. I can think of several orange things other than oranges: sea buckthorn as you say, but also cloudberries and carrots (which I don't get why they are dismissed by the article: not vibrant enough? Nor is a fox…?). An older word for orange (ish?) I can think of is brandgul. Brand is a big fire, and gul is yellow, so "big-fire yellow" if you will. Still a variation of yellow, but yet another naturally occurring orange :)
- simtel20 6y agoOrange carrots do not have a relatively long history as part of our cuisine. Reading the wikipedia article may satisfy your curiosity - it's more than I can condense at this hour. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrot?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrot?wprov=sfla1
- Tor3 6y agoGood point. Carrot with today's colour wouldn't be around before the fruit arrived in Europe. You would be more likely to find white carrots, for example.
- aikinai 6y agoI don’t think foxes are orange enough that you would make up a new word if you already had brown and red.
- noodlenotes 6y agoAh, this explains why we call it "red" hair instead of "orange". We've been talking about hair ages longer than we've had the word "orange"!
- HoverSausage 6y agoThe same for red robins which have orange feathers on their chests
- wizzwizz4 6y agoThey get redder as they get older.
- franciscop 6y agoDigging into "naranja" (the Spanish name) this article claims that the jump to the french included a latin "golden" component to it (aurum), thus forming "orange". In fact "Citrus Aurantium" is a type of orange. http://etimologias.dechile.net/?naranja http://etimologias.dechile.net/?naranja It also claims that the jump to arancia in Italian comes from the portuguese laranja, losing the "l" as it seems "la arancia". Finally, tangerine (after Tanger) is called mandarinas (after China) in Spanish, which has been for the longest time a source of confusion for me.
- pakl 6y agoYes. I was surprised that the OA gets as close as mentioning “golden apple” but misses that the Latin “aurantium” (from pomum aurantium) would sound awfully close to “orange”.
- seszett 6y agoAurantium is modern Latin though, it's a portmanteau word formed from naranja and aurum. It doesn't help understand the etymology of "orange" because it's been coined at the same time or after the word orange itself.
- riffraff 6y agothe "tangerine" is a hybrid of what is also called "mandarin" in english[0] so the spanish (and italian, hungarian et al) naming actually makes sense. It's pretty common to confuse the two plants. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_orange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_orange
- franciscop 6y agoYou are technically correct, but in the common speech "tangerine" is the same as "mandarin" in Spanish (they are not distinguised beyond scientific terms) and every time I've tried to say "mandarin" in English I've been corrected to "do you mean tangerine?" so in practical terms that is the translation for me.
- yhager 6y ago"Golden Apple" is still the word used today in modern Hebrew for orange, albeit in abbreviated form. I've always wondered where it came from.
- azepoi 6y agoGolden apple is a tomato (pomodoro) in Italian.
- boffinism 6y agoI find it weird that the article goes on and on about the lack of other words for the colour orange without once mentioning 'ginger'. Which, in the UK at least, has been used to mean orange, or at least a shade of orange, in the context of hair, for longer (I think) than we've had the word 'orange'.
- Tor3 6y agoTo me "ginger" is a more reddish colour than orange.
- bloak 6y agoThat's a good point, but I've just skimmed through the fantastically detailed entries in the Oxford English Dictionary, which seem to suggest that the word "orange" was used in English around 1400 and was used as a colour in 1532, while the word "ginger" was used in English around 1200 (or earlier) and was used as a colour in 1538. Obviously "earliest citation" is not the same thing as "first use" (though it's amazing how many people seem not to understand that) but it doesn't look as though "ginger" as a colour is much older than "orange" as a colour. On the other hand, the early 16th century is perhaps the earliest point for which we have masses of surviving texts and can therefore get a good idea of which colour names were in use. For earlier periods perhaps there's a good chance that some fairly ordinary words are missing from the record just through bad luck.
- JulianMorrison 6y agoRusset is another old color word
- stolenmerch 6y agoExcept ginger is no more synonymous with orange than tawny or tangerine are, which they do discuss as close color names for orange.
- Ichthypresbyter 6y agoIn modern Greek, the two fruits called "orange" in English have different names. The bitter orange Citrus × aurantium is called nerantzi, coming from Sanskrit via the Persian naranj. Meanwhile, the sweet orange Citrus × sinensis is called portokali, as it was brought to Greece by Portuguese traders. The Greek word for the colour orange is also portokali, but with the stress on a different syllable. This is a bit weird, as AFAIK the bitter orange reached Greece first.
- hinoki 6y agoIn Japanese, you would usually say オレンジ色 (orenji-iro), orange colour, オレンジ being a foreign loan word. But the older way to say the colour is 橙色 (daidai-iro), where daidai is Japanese for orange. I have no idea what caused this shift between the native word for the fruit to a foreign word for the fruit to describe the colour.
- valarauko 6y agoWhat's the traditional Japanese name for the colour of the Saffron robes worn by Buddhist monks? Was the saffron colour considered distinct from other orange colours?
- hinoki 6y agoI’m not an expert on Buddhism or Japan, but I found this[0] on Wikipedia which states that the colour is 藤黄 (tou-ou), wisteria yellow. Today I learned that wisteria can be yellow. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_colors_of_Japan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_colors_of_Japan
- rusk 6y agoIn Irish there is no word for the colour orange, even though there is orange on the flag. The technical term is flan bhui or “flag yellow”. Oraiste is the word for the fruit which is sometimes used to describe the colour.
- Anthony-G 6y agoInteresting. I always assumed that “oráiste” was the word for the colour as well as the fruit. Out of curiosity, I looked up the translation for the Orange Order which gives two translations: “an tOrd Oráisteach” and “na Fir Bhuí” (the yellow men): https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/Orange+Order https://www.focloir.ie/en/dictionary/ei/Orange+Order
- rusk 6y agoYeah I’ve a feeling that might be something to do with it ...
- kristiandupont 6y agoThe Danish word for orange is "appelsin". Which lead to a funny question from an Irish visitor at the breakfast table once asking me if there "are apples in this juice?", looking at the carton saying "appelsinjuice".
- galangalalgol 6y agoThe "prince of orange" predates the arrival of oranges by centuries, is that just a modern translation to english of a french title that used some other word?
- thelightthat 6y agoFrom the article: "There are lots of references to the House of Orange, which still today is officially part of the name of the royal family of the Netherlands (Orange-Nassau); but this use of “Orange” comes neither from the color nor the fruit. It takes its name from a region in southeastern France still known as “Orange.”"
- user-the-name 6y agoThe etymology for that is "apple of China".
- 4gotunameagain 6y agoI always found it funny how in many languages "potato" is the apple of the earth. [fr] pomme de terre [nl] aardappel [gr] γεώμηλο (γη + μήλο, almost never used though)
- mwexler 6y agoWas hoping to learn more about the lack of rhymes for the word "orange" in English, and if that's true in the upstream languages. Maybe in the sequel... (Edit: typos and clarity)
- hahamrfunnyguy 6y agoIn Thai language, the word for orange and the color for orange are the same. Tan and sugar are also the same word, which makes sense because raw sugar is a tan color. Raw sugar is what is commonly sold as sugar Thailand.
- swebs 6y ago>In Italian it was originally narancia, and in French narange, though the word in both of these languages eventually dropped the “n” at the beginning to become arancia and orange, probably from a mistaken idea that the initial “n” sound had carried over from the article, una or une. This actually happened pretty often with some words https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebracketing#Examples_of_false_splitting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebracketing#Examples_of_false...