Sweet Oranges - Etymology

Etymology

The word orange derives from the Sanskrit word for "orange tree" (नारङ्ग nāraṅga), probably of Dravidian origin. The Sanskrit word reached European languages through Persian نارنگ (nārang) and its Arabic derivative نارنج (nāranj).

The word entered Late Middle English in the 14th century via Old French orenge (in the phrase pomme d'orenge). The French word, in turn, comes from Old Provençal auranja, based on Arabic nāranj. In several languages, the initial n present in earlier forms of the word dropped off because it may have been mistaken as part of an indefinite article ending in an
n sound – in French, for example, une norenge may have been heard as une orenge. This linguistic change is called juncture loss. The colour was named after the fruit, and the first documented use in this sense dates to 1542.

As Portuguese merchants were presumably the first to introduce the sweet orange in Europe, in several modern Indo-European languages the fruit has been named after them. Some examples are Albanian portokall, Bulgarian портокал (portokal), Greek πορτοκάλι (portokali), Persian پرتقال (porteghal) and Romanian portocală. Related names can be found in other languages, such as Arabic البرتقال (bourtouqal), Georgian ფორთოხალი (p'ort'oxali) and Turkish portakal. In Italy, words derived from Portugal (Portogallo) to refer to the sweet orange are in common use in most dialects across the country, in contrast to standard Italian arancia.

In other Indo-European languages, the words for orange allude to the eastern origin of the fruit and can be literally translated as "apple from China". Some examples are Low German Apfelsine, Dutch appelsien and sinaasappel, Swedish apelsin and Norwegian appelsin. A similar case is Puerto Rican Spanish china.

Various Slavic languages use the variants pomaranč (Slovak), pomeranč (Czech), pomaranča (Slovene) and pomarańcza (Polish), all from Old French pomme d'orenge.