# Are there any languages where the colour orange and the fruit are totally different?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [October 23, 2009, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907 "2009-10-23T22:30:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2009, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/21 "2009-10-24T02:44:48Z")

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> [@njtt](#):
>
> It is one of the basic spectral colors (the 7 colors of the rainbow) after all. It is hardly like it is cerise or ecru or taupe or something (or even crimson or turquoise).

Actually, “orange” is one of the last [basic color terms](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Color_Terms:_Their_Universality_and_Evolution) to be added to a language as it makes more distinctions. Black/white, red, green, yellow, blue, and brown all tend to appear in languages before orange, purple, pink, and gray.

PS. Based on the sequence listed in my post above, I would assume the word entered Europe during the Moorish occupation of Iberia, with Arabic _naranj_ giving rise to Spanish _naranja_ and then passing on to other countries.

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**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2009, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/22 "2009-10-24T03:33:42Z")

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Sorry, I meant to add the etymology section from OED.

> [@](#):
>
> [\< Anglo-Norman and Middle French orenge (c1393 in Middle French; earlier in Anglo-Norman in phrase pume orenge (c1200), 1314 in Old French in phrase pomme d’orenge: see note below), Middle French, French orange (1515 as noun in a translation from Italian (itself translating a Portuguese source), 1553 as adjective), ultimately (probably, in spite of the chronology, via Italian arancio (c1309), arancia (a1336; also as narancia (1598 in Florio); Italian regional (Venice) naranza, Italian regional (Reggio Emilia) naranz, Italian regional (Milan) narans) \< Arabic nranj \< Persian nrang \< Sanskrit nraga \< a Dravidian language: compare Tamil nram, Tulu nregi. Compare also Persian nr \< anr pomegranate. Compare Spanish naranja (late 14th cent.), Portuguese laranja (1377), Old Occitan arange (c1373), irange (1390), medieval Greek .  
> In Anglo-Norman pume orenge and Old French pomme d’orenge, probably after Italian melarancio (although this is first attested later: 14th cent.) \< mela apple (see MELE n.1) + arancio orange tree, orange (see above); compare post-classical Latin pomum arantiae (1297), Italian pomerancia, and German Pomeranze (15th cent.; \< Italian), and compare also Older Scots appil orange (see Dict. Older Sc. Tongue s.v.) and Dutch oranjeappel. Initial o- in the Anglo-Norman and Old French forms is probably after the form of the place name Orange (see ORANGE n.2; compare forms in d’), perhaps also influenced by Anglo-Norman and Old French or gold (see OR n.1), with reference to the colour. Similarly, post-classical Latin has aurantia (1609, 1626 in British sources; compare later AURANTIA n.), by association with classical Latin aurum gold (see AURO- comb. form), beside arangia (Sicily, 12th cent.), arancia (15th cent.), arantia (16th cent.).  
> The loss of initial n- in French and Italian probably results from absorption of the n- when preceded by the indefinite article, although in some cases such forms may reflect loss of n- already in Arabic. Conversely, the 19th-cent. Scots form nirrange shows attraction of the -n of the indefinite article by metanalysis (see N n.).  
> The native home of the orange may have been south-east Asia, and the name may have originated there. In the Middle Ages the bitter (or Seville) orange was brought by the Arabs to Sicily, from where it spread to the rest of Europe. The sweet (or China) orange was brought from China by the Portuguese in the 16th cent.  
> The designations for certain varieties of pear (see senses A. 1b , Special uses 3 , ) are attested earlier in French than in English: with winter orange (in quot. 1767 at sense A. 1b) compare French orange d’hiver (1690); with orange musk and orange pear at Special uses 3 compare French orange musquée (1690) and poire d’orange (1603) respectively.  
> Compare the following surnames, which may reflect the Anglo-Norman or the Middle English word (or perhaps even the place name ORANGE n.2, in Old French Orenge): Sibel Orenge (1296), Ricardo Orenge (1296-7), Galfridus Orenge (1310).]

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**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2009, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/23 "2009-10-24T08:22:00Z")

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In Afrikaans, the orange fruit is called “lemoen” (pronounced like “le-moon”). The colour is called “Oranje” (pronounced like “oran-ye”). Lemons are “suurlemoen” (lit. “Sour Lemon”)

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**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2009, 11:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/24 "2009-10-24T11:35:11Z")

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In German, it’s either _Apfelsine_ or \*Orange \*for the fruit, and \*orange \*for the color.

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**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2009, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/25 "2009-10-24T15:59:52Z")

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Here’s the Wikipedia entry on the Berlin-Kay color hypothesis and the debate around it:

> **[Linguistic relativity and the color naming debate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_color_naming_debate)**
>
> The concept of linguistic relativity concerns the relationship between language and thought, specifically whether language influences thought, and, if so, how. This question has led to research in multiple disciplines—including anthropology, cognitive science, linguistics, and philosophy. Among the most debated theories in this area of work is the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. This theory states that the language a person speaks will affect the way that this person thinks. The theory varies between

The color orange is one of those that aren’t used by many languages.

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**Author:** ![Uncertain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Uncertain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uncertain)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2009, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/26 "2009-10-24T17:21:30Z")

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Catalan has 43 words for “orange”.

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**Author:** ![Delayed\_Reflex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/delayed_reflex/32/3172_2.png) [@Delayed\_Reflex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Delayed_Reflex)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2009, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/27 "2009-10-24T19:04:05Z")

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Interesting answers. So it looks like quite a few languages have a different word for the fruit (I find it funny that “Chinese apple” seems somewhat common in Europe, as apples and oranges are pretty different, hence a certain idiom ;)). It seems that a vast majority of the words for the colour orange have roots in the name of the fruit in _some_ language though (ie. many seem to be ultimately derived from the Sanskrit naranga).

> [@Colibri](#):
>
> Actually, “orange” is one of the last basic color terms to be added to a language as it makes more distinctions. Black/white, red, green, yellow, blue, and brown all tend to appear in languages before orange, purple, pink, and gray.

> [@runcible spoon](#):
>
> Not to hijack, but when I look at that wheel, I identify patches of red, yellow, green, cyan, blue and magenta. I mean, I can see that there’s orange, and purple on there, but cyan and magenta are in my vocabulary just as much, and look like bigger splotches to me (although some of that may be biased by the display). Just sayin’, color identification is influenced by what you see and talk about regularly.

Yes, when I look at the colour wheel or [spectrum](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Linear_visible_spectrum.svg) I find cyan to “pop out” as a colour as much as yellow, yet it is often lumped in as blue (sometimes even [green](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguishing_blue_from_green_in_language) is lumped in with blue). Do orange and purple tend to emerge as colours in languages before cyan or other breakdowns of the blue-green spectrum?

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**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2009, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/28 "2009-10-24T19:16:22Z")

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Just came to add that in Czech, too, they’re different: the colour is called ‘oranžový’, whereas the fruit is known as ‘pomeranč’.

yay - eight hundredth post!

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**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2009, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/29 "2009-10-24T19:38:54Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> **Delayed Reflex** : I find it funny that “Chinese apple” seems somewhat common in Europe, as apples and oranges are pretty different…

And yet in the United States a “love apple” is a tomato – which is actually a berry.

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**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2009, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/30 "2009-10-24T19:52:06Z")

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Delayed Reflex, read the Wikipedia entries linked to in my post and Colibri’s post. Orange is part of the seventh stage of acquiring color terms. Notice that the Berlin-Kay hypothesis apples only to basic color terms, which wouldn’t include cyan because that is thought of in most languages as just a variety of blue or green. My guess would be that cyan emerges in a language after orange.

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**Author:** ![Delayed\_Reflex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/delayed_reflex/32/3172_2.png) [@Delayed\_Reflex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Delayed_Reflex)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2009, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/31 "2009-10-24T20:17:33Z")

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Thanks **Wendell** , actually I did read the articles but I somehow ended up asking the wrong question - I actually wondered _why_ orange/purple emerge as defined colour terms ahead of cyan, when based on its width in the spectrum blue-green colours should be just as distinctive as red-yellow colours.

Actually now that I looked up an [older thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=536394&highlight=blue+green) about blue-green acuity, **badlyburnttoast** pointed out that there is a low-point in sensitivity in the blue-green range in human vision which may have an affect on how we perceive (and thus define) colours. This is a bit of a sidetrack from the original topic though.

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**Author:** ![ShibbOleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@ShibbOleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShibbOleth)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2009, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/32 "2009-10-24T20:24:21Z")

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> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#):
>
> Notice that the Berlin-Kay hypothesis\*\* apples \*\*only to basic color terms, which wouldn’t include cyan because that is thought of in most languages as just a variety of blue or green. My guess would be that cyan emerges in a language after orange.

That’s such a great typo.

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**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2009, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/33 "2009-10-24T20:27:42Z")

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> [@Uncertain](#):
>
> Catalan has 43 words for “orange”.

Not as basic colour terms it doesn’t. According to Berlin-Kay it will almost certainly have either 0 or 1 basic terms for orange.

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**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2009, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/34 "2009-10-24T21:20:38Z")

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Note that in Hebrew, both words (mentioned above) are bessentilally neologisms. The word for the color (_Katom_), derives from a biblical word for “finest gold”, which appears in Lamentations 4-1, among other places. The word for the fruit (_Tapuz_), is simply short for _Tapuach Zahav_, or “golden apple”.

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**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2009, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/35 "2009-10-24T22:05:21Z")

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> [@Zoe](#):
>
> And yet in the United States a “love apple” is a tomato – which is actually a berry.

Some languages call tomato’s ‘apple of gold’, following the Italian pomodoro.

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**Author:** ![phouka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c5a1d2/32.png) [@phouka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phouka)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2009, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/36 "2009-10-24T22:19:47Z")

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> [@Uncertain](#):
>
> Catalan has 43 words for “orange”.

That boggles my mind. Do you have a list anywhere?

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**Author:** ![tr0psn4j](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/958977/32.png) [@tr0psn4j](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tr0psn4j)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2009, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/37 "2009-10-24T22:29:21Z")

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In Armenian, the fruit is called “nareeng.” The color is “nareeng ah guyn.” Directly translated, that means “orange colored.” So the color isn’t orange it’s “orange colored.”

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**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2009, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/38 "2009-10-24T22:29:46Z")

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I suspect that the notion of Catalan having 43 words for “orange” is Uncertain’s idea of a joke.

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**Author:** ![Uncertain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Uncertain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uncertain)\
**Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/39 "2009-10-25T05:01:32Z")

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> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#):
>
> I suspect that the notion of Catalan having 43 words for “orange” is Uncertain’s idea of a joke.

Yes. I hope to progress to making actual jokes someday. Thanks for “getting” this attempt.

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**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\
**Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/40 "2009-10-25T08:03:07Z")

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> [@Colibri](#):
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > Originally Posted by **njtt**  
> > So, if I am following the thread correctly, in English the color name was derived from the name of the fruit. It then appears that several other languages, with quite different names for the fruit, have borrowed the color name from English. Can that be right? Why did these other languages with (I presume) otherwise quite different color vocabularies, have to borrow this word from English? Why did they not evolve their own term, like they did for other colors?
> 
> Actually, English had borrowed it from other European languages previously.  
> From [Wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_(fruit))

Yes, I am well aware that the name of the **fruit** was borrowed from some other language. Indeed, I explicitly mentioned the possibility of it having come from Spanish in my post. However, in the bit you quote I was quite explicitly talking about the **color** name, and the suggestion (based on what others had said upthread) was that this had derived, in English, from the fruit name, and later spread to other countries where the fruit is named quite differently (so they certainly did not derive their color name from their word for the fruit). A Wiki page dealing with the etymology of the name of the fruit is not to the point of what I said.

Also, I well aware that different languages divide up the color space in different (though not arbitrarily different) ways. Color naming, however, is far from being entirely at the mercy of linguistic relativism, and, even if it were, the point remains that in modern English (and, I strongly suspect, most of the other major European languages) it is, as one of the seven traditional (and Newtonian) colors of the rainbow, a fairly basic color term, covering quite a wide range of hues and shades, and learned relatively early on by children, quite unlike some of the rarer color words that exist for making finer distinctions, but that even many adults do not know or use regularly. As such, it seems remarkable that the word for the color orange seems to have entered English (and, it would appear, a lot of the other European languages) so late. Nothing that has been said so far has addressed this point.

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