Orange the Fruit was Named Before the Color

Orange is the only fruit was Named Before the Color. The story of the person who first observed an orange growing on a tree and named it the most unimaginative name he could think of has been the subject of several jokes throughout the years. The story can't be true, so you may relax. The hue was given its name after the fruit, not the other way around.

In English, the word "orange" first appeared in the 1300s. That originated in French, which was derived from Arabic, which was derived from Persian, which was derived from the Sanskrit term n?ranga, which means orange tree. Amazingly, the use of color in writing didn't begin until the 1500s. Before that, most likely, they just called everything orange "yellow-red." The fruit was easy to describe once it was widely available. In fact, very few languages have a word for orange that isn't a combination of yellow and red.