Why is an orange orange?

Benhaard

Actually its named after its color. In other languages it is called a "china apple" - in Denmark we call it "Appelsin" coming from french apple-chine (apple from china) Mar 20 07, 1:41 PM

Baloo55th

'Tother way round, I'd say. The colour we now know as orange was originally called yellow-red (geoluhread which is pronounced rather like yellow red). The fruit name comes via Old French, Old Provencal, Arabic and Persian from Sanskrit naranga, and before that probably from a Dravidian source. The word orange applied to the colour in English can be dated to the 16th C. The House of Orange is from a French origin in the Principality of Orange in southern France - which was earlier called Arausio. (And orang-utans despite their reddish colour have nothing whatever to do either but get their name from Malay.) Mar 20 07, 2:09 PM