Which Orange Came First: Color or Fruit?

A lot of people love fruits, no matter what type they are and where they came from. No matter the color if it is red, blue, purple, orange etc. It may look gross and disgusting but, in the end, it does taste good. The question becomes now: Is an orange called an orange because oranges are orange or is the color orange because oranges are orange? 

Now, this may seem like a tongue twister because, when I heard this, I thought I was going crazy because my mind was twisting and turning. However, I realized there is somewhat of an answer to this question. Technically you can say one came before the other one, but you must be sure of which one came first. If you were to find this out technically, you would say the fruit came first because the fruit was discovered in the year of 314B.C. It is an interesting discovery because it goes to show how much one small thing like a fruit inspired this tricky yet simple question. It is also interesting how the fruit was discovered so long ago before it was called an orange it was called a sweet orange. After the fruit was discovered, the color simply came much after in the year of 1797 when the color was officially well known. It is weird how the color was discovered well after the point when the fruit was discovered. I thought it would’ve been discovered around the same time period.

It may sound ridiculous, but it is a clever way of knowing to test someone’s intelligence. As well as trying to trick them but, mostly, people get this question wrong. They then realize the fruit comes first rather than the color. This question has inspired many other questions surrounding this topic such as why does the fruit come first? Another question is was it named based on the color or based on the fruit? All in all, the bottom line is that an orange is simply named an orange because the fruit orange was discovered way before the color orange. Now oranges are good as I have heard. I haven’t had any oranges really, but I have had mandarins and tangerines, which were good. But other than that, oranges are good. Alas, the color orange is a nice color as well. 

The color of orange is a nice color because it can go along with an image of a beautiful sunset or, if you are trying to draw an orange, just use the color orange to fill in that particular orange. The question here is still the same: Is orange called an orange because oranges are orange or is the color orange because oranges are orange? I most likely worded this wrong and it may get a lot of heads spinning around like crazy. Alas, I wanted to address this because this seems like a funny question to ask one of your friends if you want to prove your intelligence to them, or perhaps you just like to mess around with your friends. Like I mentioned earlier, both oranges and the color orange are both wonderful things that people have discovered and created. From the birth of oranges, there are now more things to the orange family such as mandarins and tangerines. Therefore, to conclude, oranges were named based on the fruit rather than the color orange.

Image obtained from Squarespace