# Orange oranges **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [June 24, 2010, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354 "2010-06-24T14:13:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bcef8e/32.png) [@BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2010, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/21 "2010-06-28T15:57:43Z")
Japanese distinguished blue only as a shade of green, the fact of which is present in the language today. Traffic lights are still called blue, and one of the prefectures is called Blue Forest. ---
**Author:** ![tropes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e5b9ba/32.png) [@tropes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tropes)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2010, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/22 "2010-06-28T20:09:20Z")
So is there a Sanskrit word meaning the color orange? ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2010, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/23 "2010-06-29T00:12:19Z")
> [@tropes](#): > > So is there a Sanskrit word meaning the color orange? The OED only shows that the Sanskrit word for “orange” referred to an orange tree, and suggests that that came from a Dravidian language. So, the possible order is Dravidian to Sanskrit to Persian to Arabic to Italian. There may well be a word as the OED was using this for the evolution of the word without regart to the color or the tree. I think the tree sense almost always came first. ---
**Author:** ![BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bcef8e/32.png) [@BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2010, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/24 "2010-06-29T00:49:25Z")
> [@BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](#): > > Japanese distinguished blue only as a shade of green, the fact of which is present in the language today. Traffic lights are still called blue, and one of the prefectures is called Blue Forest. Gah, sorry, the first sentence was supposed to be "Japanese distinguished **green** only as a shade of **blue** … ---
**Author:** ![signal11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4da419/32.png) [@signal11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/signal11)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/25 "2010-06-30T16:43:49Z")
> [@BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](#): > > Gah, sorry, the first sentence was supposed to be "Japanese distinguished **green** only as a shade of **blue** … Most of East Asia, actually. It’s an artifact of the Chinese sphere of influence, the classical Chinese word, character and theory referring to a dark/deep blue-green. ---
**Author:** ![Beruang](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/77aa72/32.png) [@Beruang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beruang)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2010, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/26 "2010-07-02T22:25:53Z")
In _The Dance of Life_, anthropologist Edward Hall notes that the Hopi (I think) also have no word for “orange,” but refer to it as a shade of red. He describes an experiment (and I am going from memory here, so forgive me if I get some of the details wrong) involving flash cards, each containing a basic shape – circle, square, triangle, etc. – in a solid color. Put a red circle down next to an orange circle, and anybody can tell the difference. But show the person five cards, including a red circle, take them away, show them an orange card, and ask if this was one of the five, and they will say yes. This all gets into the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, about how language colors (sorry) our perception of the world. ---
**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:** [July 3, 2010, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/27 "2010-07-03T23:00:54Z")
The naming of colors in languages is extremely varied: > **[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 study usually cited is that of Berlin and Kay. They believed that each language always had between two and twelve basic color terms. They believed that you could more or less tell which colors would be included for each language if you knew how many basic color terms there were. Recent studies claim that it’s even more complicated than that. Some people claim that the idea of color isn’t a basic notion in some languages. Some claim that some languages can’t give a color name to certain shades. In any case, the notion that because there is a word in language X for a color there must be a word in language Y for that color is hopelessly wrong. ---
**Author:** ![gwisby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gwisby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gwisby)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2010, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/28 "2010-07-12T21:37:49Z")
my question exactly, and i’m sure 1000s of others have the same question. did cecil ever address this? ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2010, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/29 "2010-07-12T23:54:00Z")
> [@gwisby](#): > > my question exactly, and i’m sure 1000s of others have the same question. did cecil ever address this? The link to Cecil’s answer was in post #1 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354.md?page=1)