Learn English – Etymology of the color name “orange”

To support the explanation offered by Philoto invoking the intuitiveness of deriving the colour name from the fruit name one can only notice that the phenomenon is a widespread one, observed in many languages and suffering only a few notable albeit easily understandable exceptions.

Here is a whirlwind tour of the various family of names for the fruit and its distinctive colour.

1. The first family is the Anglo French Orange and all its cognates
   • Italian arancia (fruit) => arancione (colour).
   • Spanish naranja (fruit) => naranja (colour).
   • Portuguese laranja (fruit) => [cor de] laranja (colour).
     
     
2. In Europe, the sweet orange was first grown in Portugal in the 15th century ¹ so that the fruit has a different name all around the mediteranean:
   • Greek πορτοκάλι "portocâli" (fruit) => πορτοκαλί (colour).
   • Rumanian portocală (fruit) => portocaliu (colour).
   • Arabic the common word (for the sweet Orange is) برتقال, burtuqāl (the persian نارنج, nāranğ is only used for the bitter varety). The colour name is identical burtuqāl.
   • Napolitan: purtuall². AFAIR the colour name is identical.
   • Turkish: portakal but the colour is turuncu from Persian nârenji (نارنجی) => The bitter variety.
   • Persian: porteqâl (پرتقال) (meaning both sweet orange and Portugal) and nârenji (نارنجی) meaning both the colour and the bitter variety.
     
     
3. In chinese, the colour (橙色 chéngsè) is named after the fruit (橙 chéng, or 橙子 chéngzi) as well.

Exceptions

1. One notable exception is the common case of many northern countries in which the fruit has two concurrent names. an older one taken from Old Dutch appelsien ³ now sinaasappel and a newer one taken from English orange. In which case the colour itself is most of the time a cognate of orange.

   • German: Apfelsine (old) but still present in Apfelsinensaft ‘orange juice’. Now Orange (with Orangensaft). colour: orange
   • Danish/Norwegian: appelsin for the fruit, orange/oransje for the colour
   • Icelandic: Appelsína, colour appelsínugulur (orange-yellow).
   • more to the east: Russian and even Mongolian : апелсин . colour: oранжевый.

2. In Dominican Republic, the orange colour is actually called "mamey" after the local fruit named Mammee. One has to mention though that they do have oranges over there but these are actually green. The Mammey instead is... orange. QED.

Note 2
^{Napolitan people will tell you that it comes from French "Pour toi" but that's folk etymology}

Note 3
^{appelsien = Chinese Apple. There is no relation with the original sin although many German contemporary oil paintings depict Adam and Eve together with the snake coiled inside an orange tree.}