# Are there any languages where the colour orange and the fruit are totally different? **URL:** \ **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:** 3
**Author:** ![Walpurgis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/7ea924/32.png) [@Walpurgis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walpurgis)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 9:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/41 "2009-10-25T09:00:25Z")
In Swedish the fruit is _apelsin_ as mentioned above. There are two common words for the colour orange: _orange_ and _brandgul_ (literally fire-yellow). I don’t know how old the word _brandgul_ is, that is, if it predates the use of _orange_. ---
**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 25, 2009, 9:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/42 "2009-10-25T09:02:25Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > 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. Other than in rainbows and on some people’s heads, when did pre-modern Europeans ever see anything orange? Were they exposed to any orange plants, orange foods or orange fabrics? ---
**Author:** ![Sragde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Sragde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sragde)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 9:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/43 "2009-10-25T09:16:26Z")
In my language (Latvian) the colour is called ‘‘oranža’’ (female) or ‘‘oranžs’’ (male), but the fruit is called ‘‘apelsīns’’ (from the German ‘‘Apfelsine’’, which means ‘‘Chinese apple’’, the same in Russian, as somebody already mentioned above) ---
**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, 9:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/44 "2009-10-25T09:41:57Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Other than in rainbows and on some people’s heads, when did pre-modern Europeans ever see anything orange? Fire? Or is that too yellowish to count? ---
**Author:** ![Myglaren](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f1d935/32.png) [@Myglaren](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Myglaren)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 9:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/45 "2009-10-25T09:54:22Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > I’m afraid to ask what that color name comes from … A purplish colour, now known as “Puce”. ---
**Author:** ![Telperion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telperion/32/509_2.png) [@Telperion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telperion)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 10:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/46 "2009-10-25T10:17:35Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Other than in rainbows and on some people’s heads, when did pre-modern Europeans ever see anything orange? At sunrise and sunset, one presumes. ---
**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 25, 2009, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/47 "2009-10-25T13:02:40Z")
> [@Uncertain](#): > > Fire? Or is that too yellowish to count? Even today, if you ask people what color fire is, 19 out of 20 of them will say “red”. > [@Telperion](#): > > At sunrise and sunset, one presumes. Were those all that orange before air pollution? ---
**Author:** ![Martha\_Medea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/43a26b/32.png) [@Martha\_Medea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martha_Medea)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/48 "2009-10-25T13:16:54Z")
In the Dominican Republic the fruit is _china_ and the colour is _mamey_, after the flesh of a completely different fruit - ‘mamee apple’ in English. People understand but do not generally use _naranja_, the more common Spanish word for both the fruit and the colour. ---
**Author:** ![Telperion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telperion/32/509_2.png) [@Telperion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telperion)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/49 "2009-10-25T13:17:05Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Were those all that orange before air pollution? If anything they appear to have been more orange, as near as I can tell. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Turner,\_J.\_M._W._-\_The\_Fighting\_T%C3%A9m%C3%A9raire\_tugged\_to\_her\_last\_Berth\_to\_be\_broken.jpg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Turner,_J._M._W._-_The_Fighting_T%C3%A9m%C3%A9raire_tugged_to_her_last_Berth_to_be_broken.jpg) ---
**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 25, 2009, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/50 "2009-10-25T13:53:48Z")
> [@Telperion](#): > > If anything they appear to have been more orange, as near as I can tell. > [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Turner,\_J.\_M._W._-\_The\_Fighting\_T%C3%A9m%C3%A9raire\_tugged\_to\_her\_last\_Berth\_to\_be\_broken.jpg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Turner,_J._M._W._-_The_Fighting_T%C3%A9m%C3%A9raire_tugged_to_her_last_Berth_to_be_broken.jpg) See that stuff coming out of the tugboat’s smoke stack? 19th Century London had some of the worst air pollution in history; they probably had beautiful sunsets, too. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/51 "2009-10-25T13:55:01Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Other than in rainbows and on some people’s heads, when did pre-modern Europeans ever see anything orange? Were they exposed to any orange plants, orange foods or orange fabrics? As **psychonaut** said, English-speakers both saw and identified the color orange in the natural world. They simply called it “yellow-red” and went on with their lives. I don’t understand **njtt** ’s assertion that orange is such a basic color. First of all, you say “it’s one of the seven traditional (and Newtonian) colors of the rainbow.” How traditional? When did we assign these names to the rainbow? It can’t be Old English, so it must be Middle English or later. I suspect very much later. Anyway, I don’t really think the seven colors of the rainbow are so fundamental, though maybe it was a formative moment in your childhood the way the 64-color box of crayolas was to me. Would you make the same argument for indigo and violet? ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/52 "2009-10-25T14:02:27Z")
Answered my own question. Re: Newton [http://www1.umn.edu/ships/updates/newton1.htm](http://www1.umn.edu/ships/updates/newton1.htm) [QUOTE=the website linked above] At first, Newton split his spectrum into five principal colors. But the number did not fit his conception that colors, like notes of music, expressed harmonies. A spectrum of colors, like a musical scale, he imagined, must have seven steps to make a full octave. (Note, here, the converse use of the color term ‘chromatic’ applied to musical scales that include all their accidentals, or half-steps.) To arrive at the requisite seven “notes,” then, Newton inserted orange and indigo into his initial scheme, each addition representing a narrow “half-step” appropriately spaced in the spectral “scale.” The roygbiv designation so familiar today thus not only reflects an arbitrary division of the spectrum, but also one shaped by a musical notion of octaves and the diatonic scale. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![Telperion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telperion/32/509_2.png) [@Telperion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telperion)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/53 "2009-10-25T14:07:37Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > See that stuff coming out of the tugboat’s smoke stack? 19th Century London had some of the worst air pollution in history; they probably had beautiful sunsets, too. Oh, give up. Do you see the ocean in the background there? London is hundreds of miles from the coast, as it happens. Besides, the painting is from 1839, so it predates the smog by several decades anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/54 "2009-10-25T14:25:23Z")
And there are, of course, [orange flowers native to Europe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilosella_aurantiaca). Probably to England, too, but I’m no botanist so I don’t know what they are. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/55 "2009-10-25T15:28:54Z")
> [@Delayed\_Reflex](#): > > I find it funny that “Chinese apple” seems somewhat common in Europe, as apples and oranges are pretty different, hence a certain idiom… I wonder whether ‘apple’ and its cognates originally had a more general meaning, more like ‘small round fruit’, and apples, oranges, lemons, tomatoes, etc, were all subtypes? Similarly, when I read that ‘hippopotamus’ meant ‘river horse’ in Greek, maybe the ‘horse’ part originally meant something like ‘large four-legged animal’? ---
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_Panic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/don_t_panic/32/398_2.png) [@Don\_t\_Panic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Panic)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/56 "2009-10-25T15:35:26Z")
> [@Sunspace](#): > > I wonder whether ‘apple’ and its cognates originally had a more general meaning, more like ‘small round fruit’, and apples, oranges, lemons, tomatoes, etc, were all subtypes? Huh. Could be. From [the Online Etymology Dictionary:](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=apple) > [@](#): > > O.E. æppel “apple,” from P.Gmc. \*ap(a)laz (cf. O.Fris., Du. appel, O.N. eple, O.H.G. apful, Ger. Apfel), from PIE \*ab(e)l “apple” (cf. Gaul. avallo “fruit;” O.Ir. ubull, Lith. obuolys, O.C.S. jabloko “apple”), but the exact relation and original sense of these is uncertain (cf. melon). As late as 17c. a generic term for all fruit other than berries but including nuts. Hence its grafting onto the unnamed “fruit of the forbidden tree” in Genesis. Cucumbers, in one O.E. work, are eorþæppla, lit. “earth-apples” (cf. Fr. pomme de terre “potato,” lit. “earth-apple;” see also melon). Fr. pomme is from L. pomum “fruit.” ---
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_Panic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/don_t_panic/32/398_2.png) [@Don\_t\_Panic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Panic)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/57 "2009-10-25T15:36:30Z")
(EDIT: Duh! Double post.) ---
**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 25, 2009, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/58 "2009-10-25T16:17:06Z")
It appears that “horse” didn’t mean just “large, four-footed animal” as far as we can go back in Indo-European: > **[horse | Search Online Etymology Dictionary](https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=horse)** > > The online etymology dictionary (etymonline) is the internet's go-to source for quick and reliable accounts of the origin and history of English words, phrases, and idioms. It is professional enough to satisfy academic standards, but accessible... Cognates of “horse” replaced the Indo-European root \*ekwo in the languages of the Germanic branch. It appears that horses were important in Indo-European society, and there’s no evidence that words derived from it were used for other animals until later times. No one’s sure, but it’s possible that “horse” and its cognates in the other Germanic languages were derived from the Indo-European root \*kurs, meaning “runner”, at some point. Uncertain, notice that phouka didn’t even understand that you were making a joke. When you make a joke that’s easy to misunderstand, don’t be too surprised that someone will fail to get it. Why are you harassing me, since I at least understood that it was supposed to be a joke, when phouka (and probably others) didn’t see that it was a joke at all? ---
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/59 "2009-10-25T16:36:46Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > Yes. Hebrew: _Tapuz_ (Fruit) and _Katom_ (Color) Thanks. I was coming here to mention Hebrew, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember the actual words. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907/60 "2009-10-25T17:44:21Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > It appears that “horse” didn’t mean just “large, four-footed animal” as far as we can go back in Indo-European… But the word I was wondering about would have been the Greek equivalent (‘hippo’?). What if ‘hippopotamus’ orignally meant ‘river beast’ instead of, specifically, ‘river horse’, and ‘hippo’ later changed meaning from ‘beast’ to ‘horse’? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-languages-where-the-colour-orange-and-the-fruit-are-totally-different/514907.md?page=4)