Etymology

The word orange is derived from Sanskrit "orange tree." The Sanskrit word is in turn lent itself as the Dravidian root for 'fragrant'. In Tamil, a bitter orange is known as'Narandam', a sweet orange is called'nagarugam' and'naari' means fragrance. In Telugu the orange is called‌ 'naringa'.

The Sanskrit word was borrowed into European languages through Persiannārang, Armenian, Arabic, (Spanish naranja and Portuguese laranja), Late Latin arangia, Italian arancia or arancio, and Old French orenge, in chronological order. The first appearance in English dates from the 14th century. The forms starting with n- are older, and this initial n- may have been mistaken as part of the indefinite article, in languages with articles ending with an -n sound (e.g., in French une norenge may have been taken as une orenge), a process called juncture loss. The name of the colour is derived from the fruit, first appearing in this sense in 1542.

Some languages have different words for the bitter and the sweet orange, such as Modern Greek nerantzi and portokali, respectively. Or in Persian, the words are narang and porteghal (Portugal), in the same order. The reason is that the sweet orange was brought from China or India to Europe during the 15th century by the Portuguese. For the same reason, some languages refer to it as Applesin (or variants), which means "Apple from China,"as does Puerto Ricans, calling it "una China" for the fruit or "jugo de china" for orange juice, while the bitter orange was introduced through Persia. Several slavic languages use the variants pomaranč (Slovak), pomeranč (Czech), pomaranča (Slovene), pomarańcza (Polish) from old French pomme d’orenge.