Why orange was named after the fruit: explained simply

The fruit came first. English had no separate word for the colour orange until the sixteenth century, about two hundred years after the fruit itself arrived from the south. Before that, speakers said yellow-red, or simply red. The word began in South Asia and passed through Persian, Arabic and French on its way, losing its first letter along the route.

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The word's journey

Sanskrit had naranga for the orange tree, a word that many scholars trace further back to a Dravidian language of South India. Tamil still has a related word for the bitter orange. Persian took it as narang and Arabic as naranj, and Arab traders carried the bitter orange west to Spain, where it is still naranja. In French and Italian the first n dropped away, probably absorbed into the article, as in une norenge. Old French orenge entered English in the late Middle Ages as the name of the fruit.

From fruit to colour

The first known uses of orange as a colour word in English date from the early 1500s. Old English had used geoluread, yellow-red, when it needed to be exact. More often people just said red, which once covered a broader span. That is why the robin has a red breast, why red hair, red deer and red squirrels are so called, and why a red fox is plainly orange. Sweet oranges reached Europe from Asia around this period, by way of Portuguese traders, and helped make the fruit an everyday sight.

The same story elsewhere

Many languages name this colour after the fruit. Hindi and Urdu use narangi. Spanish has naranja and anaranjado. In several languages the sweet orange is named after Portugal instead: Greek portokali, Turkish portakal and Arabic burtuqal, and the colour words follow. Others use different sources. Hindi also has kesariya, from kesar, saffron, which is the usual name for the top band of the Indian flag. Orange is a late arrival in most languages, and Berlin and Kay placed it in the final stage of their sequence.

Colours on this page

SaffronA yellow-orange shade named after the colour of saffron crocus threads

Also part of it, and being written: Orange.

Sources and further reading

About this page

Original text by the Rang desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Meanings of colour vary from place to place and person to person. If we have something wrong, tell us.