# What came first, the orange or orange? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 28, 2006, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-came-first-the-orange-or-orange/341967 "2006-01-28T08:18:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![mlai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e5b9ba/32.png) [@mlai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlai)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2006, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-came-first-the-orange-or-orange/341967/21 "2006-01-28T22:30:00Z")
I mean, much like older Western texts. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2006, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-came-first-the-orange-or-orange/341967/22 "2006-01-28T22:34:28Z")
Before the term ‘pink’ came (by way of the frill-petaled flower) to describe a colour, pink flowers were described using wordy expressions such as ‘white flushed with a little red’. I agree with **Hari Seldon** ; we’d have seen all the colours, we just might have called them different things. I’m sure the opposite has happened in fact; there are archaic colour terms no longer in common use, because they just describe particular shades of what we consider to be a single colour; for example _mauve_ is just purple to most people now, and _russet_ is just brown. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2006, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-came-first-the-orange-or-orange/341967/23 "2006-01-28T22:40:11Z")
> [@mlai](#): > > The idea for naming the color after the fruit seems universal though. Afterall, “juhongse”, hyperliterally, means “that reddish color you see on oranges”. Like you say, the Chinese language considers orange as a variant of red. Oh, does it come from oranges? I didn’t realize that. Pink (fenhongse) translates, if I remember right, as “powder red color”. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2006, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-came-first-the-orange-or-orange/341967/24 "2006-01-28T23:03:48Z")
> [@mlai](#): > > Well, I don’t know. But I do know that the word pink (color) was coined to describe the color of pink (the plant) blossoms. That is very much open to debate. An equally probable origin is that it is simply a borrow word from Dutch meaning ‘small’. There are several problems with attributing he origin of the word pink to the plant, not least was the apparent usage of the word before the plant came into existence. As for the apparent problem of having colours without names, colour of course forms a spectrum. The vast majority of colours have no real names, and orange isn’t particularly unusual. Orange is just a reddish yellow but we call it orange. Similarly we call both maroon and lavender ‘purple’ because they are both sort of reddish blues, yet they are quite clearly different shades. Since we can accept such wide variety in what we call ‘purple’ there’s no real problem in accpeting variation in red or yellow to encompass orange. The idea that orange wasn’t needed in England because there aren’t many ornage colours doesn’t really hold water. There may not be a huge number of orange flowers in England (though there a great many more than just 2) but there are any number of orange objects. As others have noted rust, hair, autumn leaves, butterflies, ladybirds and a great many other objects are clearly orange. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2006, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-came-first-the-orange-or-orange/341967/25 "2006-01-28T23:15:31Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > There may not be a huge number of orange flowers in England (though there a great many more than just 2) I know of only two native orange flowers; Scarlet Pimpernel and Hawkweed, and I understand that there is debate as to whether the latter of these is truly native to the British Isles. Perhaps you can name others? ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2006, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-came-first-the-orange-or-orange/341967/26 "2006-01-28T23:17:05Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > The idea that orange wasn’t needed in England because there aren’t many ornage colours doesn’t really hold water. There may not be a huge number of orange flowers in England (though there a great many more than just 2) but there are any number of orange objects. As others have noted rust, hair, autumn leaves, butterflies, ladybirds and a great many other objects are clearly orange. But there’s not a good example of a _representative_ or _prototypical_ orange object - one theory regarding why certain colors are more likely to be represented by basic color terms in language revolves around the existence of objects that are consistent, representative examples of the color. Obviously another factor is the way the eyes and brain work, as certain colors are inherently far more perceptually salient. ---
**Author:** ![aktep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f0a364/32.png) [@aktep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aktep)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2006, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-came-first-the-orange-or-orange/341967/27 "2006-01-28T23:36:03Z")
> [@mlai](#): > > The idea for naming the color after the fruit seems universal though. Afterall, “juhongse”, hyperliterally, means “that reddish color you see on oranges”. Like you say, the Chinese language considers orange as a variant of red. I don’t know if it’s exactly universal. In Russian, the fruit is “apelsin”, while the color is “oranzhivy”. From what I understand, these are borrowed almost directly from German. So that’s at least two cases where the color name does not seem related to the name of the fruit in that language. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2006, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-came-first-the-orange-or-orange/341967/28 "2006-01-28T23:42:56Z")
> [@aktep](#): > > I don’t know if it’s exactly universal. In Russian, the fruit is “apelsin”, while the color is “oranzhivy”. From what I understand, these are borrowed almost directly from German. So that’s at least two cases where the color name does not seem related to the name of the fruit in that language. Note that this is a _very_ small number of languages being examined here - and of course it’s not like we have any speakers of languages from many families. But we’ve examined, so far, a bunch of Indo-European languages, and one Chinese language. That’s not a good assortment, especially since they’re all from Eurasia with, to varying degrees, some shared culture (in contrast with the much stronger separation between, say, Native Americans or Australian Aborigines and Eurasians.) I’m just saying that because it seems like people are trying to draw universals out of a data set that is anything but universal in scope; examining commonly spoken languages among SDMB-users is not going to yield useful generalizations for most language families and populations. I hope some handy speaker of an Indic language pops in, though - I’d love to know whether the term’s origin in Sanskrit is reflected in modern forms in Hindi or other Indian languages, and whether they have separate terms for color and fruit. ---
**Author:** ![FlippyFly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e95f7d/32.png) [@FlippyFly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlippyFly)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2006, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-came-first-the-orange-or-orange/341967/29 "2006-01-28T23:50:40Z")
[Orange as a word - fruit or color first?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=336529) my thread on the topic. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2006, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-came-first-the-orange-or-orange/341967/30 "2006-01-28T23:58:25Z")
I’m not a native Hindi speaker, but I have heard the Hindi word “narang” or “narangi”, which is definitely derived from Sanskrit nAra\*nga (“naranga”), used for the fruit. (It is also attested as meaning “carrot”.) The same word is used for the color orange. (Hee hee—check out the online [quiz on color names in Hindi](http://faculty.maxwell.syr.edu/jishnu/101/colors/quiz.asp?) if you don’t believe me! Geez, everything’s on the internet. :)) ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2006, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-came-first-the-orange-or-orange/341967/31 "2006-01-29T00:02:58Z")
Thanks for the linked thread, **FlippyFly**. I cannot understand why **yabob** wasn’t lynched on the spot. Groooooaan. ---
**Author:** ![Crescend](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Crescend](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crescend)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2006, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-came-first-the-orange-or-orange/341967/32 "2006-01-29T00:16:00Z")
> [@aktep](#): > > I don’t know if it’s exactly universal. In Russian, the fruit is “apelsin”, while the color is “oranzhivy”. From what I understand, these are borrowed almost directly from German. So that’s at least two cases where the color name does not seem related to the name of the fruit in that language. “Apelsin” is derived from the German \Apfelsine\, meaning “Chinese Apple”, which is to say, orange. (The modern “orange” is not what was meant by the old Persian \narang\ - that refers to the bitter orange, perhaps the tangerine?) The modern large, sweet orange was thought to have originally come from China, which is reflected in its scientific name, \Citrus sinensis\. Oranzhivy, on the other hand, looks pretty clearly derived from “orange”. Wonder what came first in Russian - the oranzhivy color, or the apelsin fruit. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2006, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-came-first-the-orange-or-orange/341967/33 "2006-01-29T00:20:04Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > I know of only two native orange flowers; Scarlet Pimpernel and Hawkweed, and I understand that there is debate as to whether the latter of these is truly native to the British Isles. > > Perhaps you can name others? The only two I know by name are bids-foot trefoil, which is more oragne than yellow, especially when freshly opened, and the common marigold, which occurs fairly commonly in orange as well as white and yellow varieties. There are numerous others that I have seen but never bothered to identify, being just generic wildflowers. > [@](#): > > But there’s not a good example of a representative or prototypical orange object - one theory regarding why certain colors are more likely to be represented by basic color terms in language revolves around the existence of objects that are consistent, representative examples of the color. That seems to make some sort of sense. When did carrots become orange? > [@](#): > > Obviously another factor is the way the eyes and brain work, as certain colors are inherently far more perceptually salient. I would have thought that orange was highly perceptually salient, which is why it used in warning signs in preference to red or yellow as well as being a common warning colour for poisonous animals and plants. It seems that orange would be more perceptually salient than purple, yet purple as word seems to predate orange by some time. I’m guessing once we get away from the ‘primary’ colours the difference has more to do with the avialability of fabric dyes than any effect of the colour itslef. Purple dye was avialble if expensive and yellow and brown dyes were fairly common so those words stuck. Orange, depsite being distinctive and visyually striking wasn’t easily produced as a pigmnent and so no word ever developed to describe it. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2006, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-came-first-the-orange-or-orange/341967/34 "2006-01-29T00:29:15Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > That seems to make some sort of sense. When did carrots become orange? Carrots are indeed the only thing I can think of that might have been - they are pretty reliably orange. It wouldn’t have been a surprise if “carrot” had ended up the color name. I’m not sure the origins of carrots, though - are there wild carrots in England? Are they the same sort of orange? > [@](#): > > I would have thought that orange was highly perceptually salient, which is why it used in warning signs in preference to red or yellow as well as being a common warning colour for poisonous animals and plants. It seems that orange would be more perceptually salient than purple, yet purple as word seems to predate orange by some time. That wasn’t exactly what I was getting at - orange is highly _visible_, no doubt. But - and my knowledge of this area is thinner - my understanding is that the nerves of the eye deliver color information with two signals - one indicating red/green, and the other indicating blue/yellow. I’m not sure why that is, as the eye has three pigments, which (so I’ve read) respond most strongly to yellow, a sort of greenish, and violet. I don’t know anything about the neurological equipment underlying vision. But if the eye breaks colors down into red/green and blue/yellow components, it makes sense that those are the four colors other than black and white that languages with six basic colors have. > [@](#): > > I’m guessing once we get away from the ‘primary’ colours the difference has more to do with the avialability of fabric dyes than any effect of the colour itslef. Purple dye was avialble if expensive and yellow and brown dyes were fairly common so those words stuck. Orange, depsite being distinctive and visyually striking wasn’t easily produced as a pigmnent and so no word ever developed to describe it. Are there any good natural orange pigments? That is, of course, the origin of the color name “purple”. I’m sure it played a strong role in the development of color names. If there weren’t orange dyes, perhaps people just didn’t need a word for it. Assuming you mean red, yellow, green, and blue (for which the cross-linguistic evidence of primary status is strong) as “primary colors”, I would bet you’re right. It’s certainly the case that color names develop when we have materials to produce them. That’s probably why the otherwise rather unassuming “indigo” has a well-known name. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2006, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-came-first-the-orange-or-orange/341967/35 "2006-01-29T00:30:49Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Orange, depsite being distinctive and visyually striking wasn’t easily produced as a pigmnent and so no word ever developed to describe it. Saffron (Hindi _kesar_, Sanskrit _kesara_, Arabic _za`far_) was used as a dye, and it’s quite orangey. Hellishly expensive, though. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2006, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-came-first-the-orange-or-orange/341967/36 "2006-01-29T00:39:42Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > The only two I know by name are bids-foot trefoil, which is more oragne than yellow, especially when freshly opened, and the common marigold, which occurs fairly commonly in orange as well as white and yellow varieties. There are numerous others that I have seen but never bothered to identify, being just generic wildflowers. Certainly there are orange-ish examples of birdsfoot Trefoil, however, I think it’s rather a stretch to call it ‘more orange than yellow’. Marigolds are not native to the British Isles - _Calendula_ species come from the Mediterranean region and _Tagetes_ (so-called French marigolds) come from South America and Africa. I suspect the others you have seen will be naturalised introductions. > [@](#): > > That seems to make some sort of sense. When did carrots become orange? I realise the question was not addressed to me, but the orange-coloured forms of carrot appear to have arisen ‘sometime in the middle Ages’ - according to a couple of books on my shelf. Prior to this, they were white or deep purple. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2006, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-came-first-the-orange-or-orange/341967/37 "2006-01-29T00:42:22Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > Carrots are indeed the only thing I can think of that might have been - they are pretty reliably orange. It wouldn’t have been a surprise if “carrot” had ended up the color name. I’m not sure the origins of carrots, though - are there wild carrots in England? Are they the same sort of orange? Carrots are not native to Britain; they come from the middle east somewhere. As mentioned above, the orange form does not occur naturally; it arose in cultivation (apparently in Holland). ---
**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:** [January 29, 2006, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-came-first-the-orange-or-orange/341967/38 "2006-01-29T00:47:12Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > Carrots are indeed the only thing I can think of that might have been - they are pretty reliably orange. It wouldn’t have been a surprise if “carrot” had ended up the color name. I’m not sure the origins of carrots, though - are there wild carrots in England? Are they the same sort of orange? Wikipedia says that the carrot arrived in England no earlier than the 15th or 16th century ([cite](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrot))… > [@Wikipedia on oranges](#): > > The Western carrot emerged in the Netherlands in the 15th or 16th century, its orange colour making it popular in those countries as an emblem of the House of Orange and the struggle for Dutch independence. The orange colour results from abundant carotenes in these cultivars. While orange carrots are nearly ubiquitous in the West, other colours do exist, including white, yellow, red, and purple. These other colours of carrot are raised primarily as novelty crops. …so it may well be newer than or contemporaneous with the word orange in English. ---
**Author:** ![Miss\_Purl\_McKnittington](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9a140/32.png) [@Miss\_Purl\_McKnittington](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Purl_McKnittington)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2006, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-came-first-the-orange-or-orange/341967/39 "2006-01-29T00:56:48Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Yup, and I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that this happened as part of an influx of French technical vocabulary concerning couture/fashion (although I don’t know exactly when). Considering all the French-derived English terms for fabrics and clothing design, I would bet that most French-derived color words were imported along with them. You know, I’d always just assumed that we got the French color words because the French were the ruling class of England back in the day (1066 and the Normans and all that jazz), and so some words just trickled down into the common language that way. (That’s obviously over-simplified. Forgive me.) So I decided to have some fun with the OED and looked up as many color words that I thought were derived from French as I could. puce – from the French word for flea _puce_, which is from the Latin _pulex, -icem_, meaning the same; first English usage in 1787. beige – from the French _beige_, adj; 1. n A fine woollen fabric used as a dress-material, originally left in its natural colour but later dyed in various colours; first use 1858 2. A shade of colour like that of undyed and unbleached wool; yellowish-grey; first use 1879 in a fashion magazine. mauve – from the French\* mauve\* the colour of the mallow flower (1804 as noun, 1829 as adjective; 13th cent. in Old French in sense ‘the plant mallow’); from the classical Latin _malva_, also meaning mallow. 1. adj. Of the colour mauve; first use 1860. Variant _mauve-colour/ed_ first appearing in 1859. Its use as a noun meaning a mauve-colored anilline dye is now historical. aubergine – from the French diminutive for \*auberge, a variant of _alberge_, a type of small peach. 1. The fruit of the eggplant, first use 1794. 2. A purple colour resembling that of the fruit. First use 1895, in a fashion magazine. taupe – from the French, which is from the Latin _talpa_ for mole. 1. A brownish shade of grey resembling the colour of moleskin. First use 1911 in a newspaper talking about a purchase of silk fabric. ecru – from the French _écru_, meaning raw, unbleached. 1. The color or unbleached linen. First use 1869. At that point I ran out of color names. But color me (heh!) shocked that so many of these colors have come so recently into our language and it seems always in relation to fashion. I was fully anticipating to discover that they had entered some time in the 11th century, and had just been kicking around since then. > [@Kimstu](#): > > Saffron (Hindi kesar, Sanskrit kesara, Arabic za`far) was used as a dye, and it’s quite orangey. Hellishly expensive, though. Madder root, which was used by the ancient Egyptians and used until the mid-nineteenth century in Europe and the US, is usually used to achieve reds, but it’s very easy to get the dye to turn orange, especially on silks. If the dyepot gets too hot, you get a muddy orange brown. If the dyebath isn’t strong enough, you’ll end up with a tawny-orange color. The addition of different mordants or changing the pH of the water will result in any number of shades on the orange-red spectrum. If you overdye the fabric with blue (woad), you get purple. It’s a really versatile little root. ---
**Author:** ![Miss\_Purl\_McKnittington](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9a140/32.png) [@Miss\_Purl\_McKnittington](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Purl_McKnittington)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2006, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-came-first-the-orange-or-orange/341967/40 "2006-01-29T00:58:22Z")
Oh, and I should add that madder was one of the cheapest dyestuffs and was used by just about anyone who could afford dyed fabric. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-came-first-the-orange-or-orange/341967.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-came-first-the-orange-or-orange/341967.md?page=3)