Orange is my favorite color, so I wanted to look into its etymology. As it turns out though, the color comes from the fruit (which makes sense), so I looked at the fruit’s etymology.

Orange trees spread from Northern India to the Middle East, then from Italy into Europe where it eventually got brought over to the Americas. Understandably, the word for the fruit followed a similar path, since there wasn’t a need for the word until the fruit came about.

From the Sanskrit naranga
to the Persian narang
to the Arabic naranj
to the Venetian naranza
to the Italian arancia (where “cia” is pronounced “cha”)
to Medieval Latin [pomum de] orenge
to the Old French orange.

Orange stayed the same as Old French evolved into Modern French and was then borrowed into the English language.

Still, the color was described as yellow-red until the 1500’s. By that time, oranges were wide-spread enough that the name of the fruit was adopted to describe the color of said fruit.

Orange you glad to know that?

Happy Hump Day! See you Nerds next week with the etymology of another word. Feel free to comment below or on Instagram with words you’d like to see in upcoming weeks.