The Origin of Orange

In the English language, the word "orange" refers to one of two things. The first is a citrus fruit, while the second is the name we give to the color of that fruit. However, the origin of the word "orange" is quite interesting.

The word initially began with an "n" sound, as found in the Sanskrit word for orange, "nāraṅgaḥ," and the Persian word ("nārang") or the Arabic word ("nāranj"). Over time, words can undergo a process called "re-bracketing," when the boundaries between words shift. For example, in English, did you know that "an apron" was originally called "a napron"? Similarly, what we now call "a nickname" was originally called "an eke name." Something similar happened to the word "orange," but not in English; rather, we have the French to thank for our current pronunciation of the word.

When oranges were introduced to France, the French called it "une norange." Over time, this got re-bracketed to "une orange." When the word was adopted into English, it came pre-re-bracketed, and English has always known the fruit as "an orange."

Therefore, while many people believe this to be the case, it is a fact that "oranges" were never referred to as "noranges," at least not in English.

The name for the color orange comes, of course, from the name of the fruit. However, this means that before the fruit was widely known, English had no word for the color orange. In fact, those literal-minded Old Englishers called the color as they saw it: "yellow-red."



Source:

"orange n.1 and adj.1". Oxford English Dictionary online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2013.