Although you might expect oranges to have taken their name from their colour, the opposite is true: the name of the colour was borrowed from the name of the fruit. The ultimate source of the orange’s name is the Sanskrit nnaranga, which made its way through Persian and Arabic before arriving in Spanish as namnj. The French then borrowed this Spanish name, but changed its spelling: they inadvertently dropped its initial n because in Old French une naranj sounded just like une aranj. Once this initial n was lost, the French then changed the rest of the word to orenge, which became the English orange in the fourteenth century; in the mid sixteenth century this fruit name was then borrowed as the name of a colour. Of course, all this raises a puzzling question: 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 necessary because in rainy, grey, medieval England orange was simply not a colour that commonly appeared in nature; even carrots were yellow until nineteenth-century horticulturalists bred them to their present hue. Considering that it was to this rather drab environment that oranges were imported, it’s little wonder that their vibrant appearance gave rise to a new colour name. Incidentally, about a hundred years after orange became a colour, William of Orange became king of England. It was not his love of fruit or his colourful personality, however, that gave him his title; rather, he acquired it from the name of his official principality, a town in France known to the ancient Romans as Arausio, meaning mountainous, but which the French corrupted to Orange.
Emerging from the bountiful evergreen tree, native to China, we encounter the luscious fruit that flourishes in hot climates across numerous regions. Oranges, distinguished by two primary varieties, sweet and bitter (commonly known as Seville), captivate palates around the world. The bitter variety, predominantly sourced from Spain, finds its purpose in the creation of delectable marmalades. Sweet oranges cultivated in the United States include the esteemed Valencia, grown in Florida, California, and Arizona, as well as the renowned Navel, cultivated primarily in California and Arizona. While the tangerine, also known as the mandarin, is considered distinct from the orange, it is noteworthy that the hybrid tangerine known as the Temple orange contributes significantly to the orange crop. Oranges, a fruit of abundant availability, can be enjoyed year-round, with thriving cultivation taking place in regions such as California, Florida, Arizona, Sicily, Spain, Portugal, Malta, Israel, and South Africa.