Who said that a word is just a word? This one in particular has a long history. From its origins to what we know it now, both in English and in Spanish. The story about this word goes like this:

From the Sanskrit nāranga (“orange tree”).

Then the Persians took the word and modified it by taking its “a” away, making it:  nārang.

Then the Arabs used the same word, of course modified it too making it look like this: nāranj.

Later on, the Hispanic Arabs also took the word, and added the “a”. naranǧa. This is not the only word that has an influence from Arab in Spanish language.

All in all, the citrus got its name first. The first use of orange the fruit in English is from the 1300s and came to be part of the English language from the Old French orenge.

Orange in Spanish can be masculine or feminine:

In Spanish it is important to keep in mind that if you are talking about the color, it is masculine (el naranja). If you are talking about the fruit, it will be feminine (la naranja). If you said “el naranjo” you would be talking about the tree that produces the orange.

In English, people didn’t start using the word to describe the color until the early 1500s. By this time the fruit was more available in the markets so it started gaining popularity as the name for the color. Before that, linguists think color orange was referred as “yellow-red” or ġeolurēad in Old English.

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