There was a discussion about the origin of the word ‘Orange’ and if it is a color or a fruit. A friend asked what would be the name in Tamil for the color. Here we go with the details.
Here is the etymology – ‘ O Range’ color/fruit comes from Puri Jagannath Yatri’s costume as seen by the British. In Tamil, it is called ‘Naranampazham’. However, wearing the color is significant to all Hindu deities.
Here are some more roots for the word.
The word itself begins as an ancient Sanskrit word, naranga, possibly derived from an even older Dravidian (another ancient language spoken in what is now southern India) Tamil root, naru, meaning ‘fragrance’. {‘Naatram” means Manam. Durnattram’ is an ‘obnoxious smell’. ( A contranym in usage).}
Along with the oranges, the word migrated into Persian and Arabic. From there it was adopted into European languages, as with narancs in Hungarian or the Spanish naranja. In Italian, it was originally narancia, and in French narange, though the word in both of these languages eventually dropped the “n” at the beginning to become arancia and orange, probably from a mistaken idea that the initial “n” sound had carried over from the article, una or une. Think about English, where it would be almost impossible to hear any real difference between “an orange” and “a norange.” An “orange” it became, but it probably should really have been a “norange.” Still, orange is better, if only because the initial “o” so satisfyingly mirrors the roundness of the fruit.
The etymological history of “orange” traces the route of cultural contact and exchange—one that ultimately completes the circle of the globe. The word for “orange” in modern-day Tamil, the surviving Dravidian language that gave us the original root of the word, is arancu, pronounced almost exactly like the English word “orange” and in fact borrowed from it.
But none of this actually gets us to color. Only the fruit does that. Only when the sweet oranges began to arrive in Europe and became visible on market stalls and kitchen tables did the name of the fruit provide the name for the color. No more “yellow-red.” Now there was orange. And, remarkably, within a few hundred years it was possible to forget in which direction the naming went. People could imagine that the fruit was called an orange simply because it was.
BTW – ORANGE is the only word in English that does not have a rhyming match. Therefore it can’t be used in poetry with rhyme and rhythm.
‘O Ranga”