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Orange’s Tale
Orange got its name from the oldest language in the world
There are times when something crosses your mind, and you suddenly think about it. Sometimes it may seem silly, but there are opportunities to gain knowledge through these thoughts. These thoughts led to some research and found an interesting fact about how the name orange came about.
Have you ever wondered about which came first orange color or fruit — I did and took a wild guess that color came first and, the fruit was named after it, but I guessed wrong.
How the fruit orange got its name is an interesting tale — The orange fruits are named after the number of orange segments when spitting into two parts. An orange usually has 11 segments and, when you divide it into two. One part contains six segments and, the other part has five segments, making the total eleven segments. In Tamil, Aru means six, and Anju means five. Combined, Aaru + anju = Aaranju, pronounced in English as Orange.
Later, the orange color got its name from the orange fruit. The orange color is named after the shade of the orange, ripe fruit. During this research, I also discovered that oranges at first were not orange. Instead, the orange peel turns orange as the weather cools, but in hotter regions, the chlorophyll remains and, the fruit remains green.
