Do we call oranges oranges because of the colour orange and if they were blue would we call them blues?

Question

thanks for your little song "what the deuce" it was lovely :)

Answer 1

i've totally asked this question before, not here on answers but still lol...makes ya wonder

i think thats the only reason we call it an orange because we dont call apples, yellow, reds and greens do we? lol

Answer 2

Linguistic, archaeological, and 'center of diversity' evidence places the domestication of Citrus fruits in China, Southeast Asia, and the Indus Valley around 4000 BCE. Ancient Arabs, Jews, Greeks, and Romans knew citrus in the form of the citron. Romans called the fruit, citrus or citrea, from the Greek, kitrea. Linnaeus kept the Latin for the generic designation.

By the later years of the Roman Empire lemons and sour and sweet oranges were well-known in the eastern Mediterranean. When the Empire fell, most citrus were lost to Europe. Arabic traders and armies reintroduced lemons and sour oranges from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries.


Sweet oranges are relatively recent introductions to the Western world (mid-1400s or early 1500s). The trees were 'created' and domesticated by the cultures of southern and eastern Asia. According to Cologne Digital Sanskrit Lexicon (using the Harvard-Kyoto convention transliteration), two of the Sanskrit names for the orange tree are yoga-raGga and nAgaraGga. According to the 1889 Century Unabridged Dictionary, from the Sanskrit came the Hindi, narangi, and the Pali (scholarly language of Theravada Buddhism), narango.

In ancient Persian, it was called the narang and in Arabic, naranj. The Arabic name passed to the Spanish, naranja, and the Portuguese, laranja. In Italy and France, the Arabic name was combined with Latin aurum (the color gold) becoming arancia and auranja, respectively.

Eric Partridge offers an alternate derivation: "the change from naranja to aranja was caused by confusion of the -n of the indefinite article un, un naranja becoming un aranja." (Origins, a Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 1983, Greenwich House) The English word, orange, did not appear in print until around 1542. Oddly, the color orange appears to have been named for the fruit.

Answer 3

No. The color comes from the fruit.

The english "orange" comes from the french orange (like about 50% english words).
In french, it comes from the arabic narandj which itself comes from the persian nāranğ. It looks like it does NOT come from sanskrit.

Why I know that the color comes from the fruit, for sure ? Because in french, the color adjective "orange" is invariable (it does not take the plural form with "s"), while the rule for a normal adjective is to make a gender/number agreement with the name.

Ex:
"Des fleurs bleues" (with the final s) [blue flowers]
"Des fleurs orange" (no s here!). [orange flowers]
This is the grammatical mark of color adjective that comes from a name.

A french dictionary confirms: Orange: adjectif invariable.

Answer 4

We don't call Bananas yellows so I guess not. I think we probably say things are orange because oranges are called oranges.

Answer 5

The orange color of the fruit will not develop unless it is exposed to cool nights.

"The word "orange" ultimately comes from Sanskrit narang or Tamil "naraththai"." (Obviously became orange because to the similarity in the sounds of the Indian name and the color).

So the answer to your question is a resounding maybe!

Answer 6

Nothing to do with the colour - that came later, just like lemons - how else would you get "blood oranges" ! ! !

Answer 7

I think the color was named first, and the fruit got named afterward. Not very imaginative, is it?

I wrote a little song:

I love ya baby (harmonica riff)
but don't make me choose (harmonica riff)
It ain't easy decidin' (harmonica riff)
Between apples & blues

Answer 8

i would like to be honest but I aint got a clue!

Answer 9

no, that name is taken by some valiums