SC - Oranges and "orange" - OT/(?)OOP

[Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir]

Bear wrote:
>It appears to have originally been a town and region in southeast France,
>Orenge.
>as to when it was first used to describe the color, I have no information
at
>present.


According to The Gourmet´s Guide by John Ayto:

"The Spanish naturalized naranj as naranja, but when the word penetrated
further north to France in the late thirteenth century it became transmuted
to orenge, later orange, perhaps partly undir the influence of the town of
Orange, in southeastern France, a centre of the orange trade ... Orange is
first recorded as a colour term in the sixteenth century." There is also
some speculation that the term may have been influenced by the French word
"or", gold.

Mark Morton says in Cupboard Love: " ... what did the English call the
colour orange before they adopted the word orange? To some extent, other
colours did double duty: fire, for example, was described as being red.
However, not much of this double-dutying was actually neccessary because in
rainy, grey, medieval England orange was simply not a colour that commonly
appeared in nature ... it´s little wonder that their vibrant appearance gave
rise to a new colour name."

I might add that orange was not a color frequently seen in rural Iceland in
the early sixties, either. When we used it, even to describe the oranges we
had about once a year, we called it "rauðgult" (red-yellow). I hardly ever
heard the Icelandic term equivalent to orange ("appelsínugult",
yellow-as-an-orange) until much later. So I can well believe that there was
little need for a separate name for this color in medieval times.

Nanna

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