Orange, the fruit, has been in English since the fourteenth century. Orange, the colour, isn’t attested before the seventeenth century.
So what did we call the colour orange before we thought of calling it "orange"?
I’d also like to know what the Dolomite mountains in Europe were called before 1794. For years I’ve assumed that the rock dolomite was named after the mountains. But now I find that the rock is named after a French geologist, Dolomieu, and the mountains take their name from the rock!
I don’t have access to the full OED at the moment to confirm date of first usage, but could ochre/ocher have been used to describe the colour before orange?
Ochre covers a range of colours from yellow to deep orange and brown.
This reminds me of some of the discussions in the What’s the Name for that colour? thread. I wonder what happened culturally/historically/conceptually that we needed a name for orange? It does seem a more essential color name than, say Avocado, as it a secondary color (mixture of two primaries, red and yellow).
orange - c.1380, from O.Fr. orenge, from M.L. pomum de orenge, alt. of Ar. naranj, from Pers. narang, from Skt. naranga-s "orange tree." Loss of initial n- probably due to confusion with definite article. The original Persian orange, once grown widely in southern Europe, was bitter; sweet oranges were brought back to Europe in 15c. from India by Portugese traders and quickly displaced the bitter variety, but only Mod.Gk. still seems to distinguish the bitter (nerantzi) from the sweet (portokali "Portugese") orange. Portuguese, Spanish, Arab and Dutch sailors planted citrus trees along trade routes to prevent scurvy. On his second voyage in 1493, Christopher Columbus brought the seeds of oranges, lemons and citrons to Haiti and the Caribbean. Introduced in Florida (along with lemons) 1513 by Sp. explorer Juan Ponce de Leon. Introduced to Hawaii 1792. Not used as the name of a color until 1542. Orangemen refers to Irish secret society founded 1795 in Belfast, named for William of Orange (who became King William III of England), of the Ger. House of Nassau; the name is from the town of Orange on the Rhone in France, which was part of the Nassau principality, the town so called because it was said to have been a center for importing oranges.
http://www.geocities.com/etymonline/o2etym.htm... sorry I didn’t get the reference website in at the top of the above post. My grandaughter jumped on me right at the moment I was about to click,... and the mouse jumped,... and away the post went! I feel like it’s cheating to go off to another website and find info…but it’s better than making up something and acting like,... well, you know.
I would also check the names of artists’ colours (for example soft pastels), because they have a huge range of names and lots of times they reflect the name of the original pigments. For example, ochre and burnt sienna, which are close (but no cigar?) to orange and have been in use for quite a while.
By the way, the word for orange in Spanish is naranja, which is extremely close to the Arabic name (centuries of occupation did have some influence).
[quote author=johnnyfarout link=board=what;num=1041441119;start=0#3 date=01/02/03 at 17:41:53]...sweet oranges were brought back to Europe in 15c. from India by Portugese traders and quickly displaced the bitter variety, but only Mod.Gk. still seems to distinguish the bitter (nerantzi) from the sweet (portokali "Portugese") orange.
Greek….and German.
Pomeranze: bitter orange (borrowed from pomerancia (mlat))
Apfelsine: sweet orange (imported to Europe around 1500 by the Portuguese from South China. Arrived in the northern ports Amsterdam and Hamburg around 1700. Name based on old Dutch: apple from china .
Orange: sweet orange (derivation as already posted by johnnyfarout).
[quote author=uncronopio link=board=what;num=1041441119;start=0#6 date=01/02/03 at 18:15:51]I would also check the names of artists’ colours (for example soft pastels), because they have a huge range of names and lots of times they reflect the name of the original pigments.
Good suggestion. Philip Ball’s fascinating Bright Earth is a history of pigments and dyes.
He says that the first true orange paint wasn’t available until the start of the nineteenth century: chrome orange.
Before that, artists used a rather yellow shade that was called realgar (from Arabic rehj al-gahr "the powder of the cave". This was also called red orpiment, which is very interesting, because orpiment, according to the OED, derives from Latin auripigmentum "gold pigment". This reminded me that the transition from "a norange" to "an orange" mentioned by johnnyfarout is supposed to have taken place under the influence of the Latin word aurum, gold.
So I wonder if people saw the colour orange as a variant of gold?
Words for the distinction of color interest me, particularly in the way they vary across cultures. For instance, in Japanese (and I believe in Chinese, too,) the primary word used for blue can also mean green. I wonder exactly how language affects perception of colors; for instance, pink seems to me to be very distinct from red, even though I know that it’s just a lighter version of the same color. Do we have different common words for red and pink because they’re more distinct from each other than purple and lavender, or do they seem more distinct from one another because we learn different color names for them at an early age?
It might have been that for a long time, people didn’t see a need for a term for orange as a color in and of itself, so they classified orange objects as whatever other earth tone seemed closest. After all, truly bright, distinctive orange doesn’t occur a great deal in nature in temperate climates.
As a side note, the words in Spanish for orange, the color, and orange, the fruit, are not the same, but they are close enough to see they’re related at a glance.
[quote author=Silver Han link=board=what;num=1041441119;start=0#9 date=01/03/03 at 18:55:56]As a side note, the words in Spanish for orange, the color, and orange, the fruit, are not the same, but they are close enough to see they’re related at a glance.
They are the same: naranja. However, there is another word (anaranjado) that is also used as the name of the colour.
In heraldry orange is tawny or tenne. Tawny was also a fabric dye colour during the 16th century (if not before), although it is often described as ‘yellowish tan’.
[quote author=johnnyfarout link=board=what;num=1041441119;start=0#3 date=01/02/03 at 17:41:53]
. . . Orangemen refers to Irish secret society founded 1795 in Belfast, named for William of Orange (who became King William III of England), of the Ger. House of Nassau; the name is from the town of Orange on the Rhone in France, which was part of the Nassau principality, the town so called because it was said to have been a center for importing oranges.
Please note that the Orangemen or Orange Order is not just an Irish secret society but a militant Protestant group in Northern Ireland, many of whose members will undoubtedly share a place in Hell with the Provisional Wing of IRA, where they may continue to blast each other to Kingdom come for the rest of eternity.
[quote author=Linnet link=board=what;num=1041441119;start=0#11 date=01/04/03 at 00:47:38]In heraldry orange is tawny or tenne. Tawny was also a fabric dye colour during the 16th century (if not before), although it is often described as ‘yellowish tan’.
Tawny sounds like lion-colored to me. Don’t know where I picked it up, but that’s what I always think of when I see tawny. Kitty!
[quote author=Silver Han link=board=what;num=1041441119;start=0#13 date=01/04/03 at 04:54:19]
Tawny sounds like lion-colored to me. Don’t know where I picked it up, but that’s what I always think of when I see tawny. Kitty!
Probably from the definition of tawny and the description of a lion.
More than you ever wanted to know:
taw·ny n. A light brown to brownish orange.
[Middle English, from Anglo-Norman taune, variant of Old French tane, from past participle of taner, to tan ; see tan1.]
tawni·ness n.
tawny adj.
li·on n.
1. A large carnivorous feline mammal (Panthera leo) of Africa and northwest India, having a short tawny coat, a tufted tail, and, in the male, a heavy mane around the neck and shoulders.
2. Any of several large wildcats related to or resembling the lion.
3.
a. A very brave person.
b. A person regarded as fierce or savage.
c. A noted person; a celebrity: a literary lion.
4. Lion See Leo.
Idiom:
lion’s share
The greatest or best part.
[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin leo, leon-, from Greek leon, of Semitic origin; see lb in Semitic roots.]
Word History: Old French lion is the source of English lion, and the Old French word comes from Latin leo, leonis. After that the etymology is less clear. The Latin word is related somehow to Greek leon, leontos (earlier *lewon, *lewontos), which appears in the name of the Spartan king Leonidas, "Lion’s son," who perished at Thermopylae. The Greek word is somehow related to Coptic labai, laboi, "lioness." In turn, Coptic labai is borrowed from a Semitic source related to Hebrew labi’ and Akkadian labbu. There is also a native ancient Egyptian word, rw (where r can stand for either r or l and vowels were not indicated), which is surely related as well. Since lions were native to Africa, Asia, and Europe in ancient times (Aristotle tells us there were lions in Macedon in his day), we have no way of ascertaining who borrowed which word from whom.
It occurred to me that we call one particularly common orange phenomenon red instead of orange: red hair. The redhead. The Red Fox. The Red Deer. Eric the Red (~950 - ~1003). Barbarossa (1122-1190).
Could it be that this still stems from the times before the orange?
