Why are oranges called oranges, but peaches aren’t called pinks, and plums aren’t called purples?
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According to a bit of quick research, the colour orange came from the fruit. We didn’t call the fruit orange because of it’s colour, we called the colour ‘orange’ because of the fruit’s name.
‘We [English speakers] lifted the word from French, which got it (with modifications) from Italian “arancia”, which came from Arabic “naranj”, which derived from Sanskrit “naranga”.’ -[Sharon Wolfgang, in response to a similar question on Quora](https://www.quora.com/Why-is-an-Orange-the-only-fruit-named-after-a-colour)
Before this, English (or rather, Old English) didn’t have a name for the colour orange, we called it ‘geoluhread’, or ‘yellow-red’. Eventually, as English-speakers became familiar with oranges, they decided to name the yellow-red colour ‘orange’.
English didn’t have a word for the color “orange” until the fruit made it’s way to the region. That’s why a lot of orange things (like hair) are called “red” in English. The color we now call orange used to be lumped in under the umbrella of “red.”
The color is named after the fruit. The fruit isn’t named after the color.
The color orange is named after the fruit, just like the color peach, the color pink (it’s a flower), and the color plum. Really it’s only purple that’s the odd one out here; it comes from ancient Greek and was the name of the shellfish purple dye used to be made from.
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