Orange, the Fruit That Named the Colour

Orange is unusual among colour words in that it is named after an object rather than the reverse: the fruit reached Europe from Asia, its name travelling through Persian and Arabic to the Old French orenge, and English had no distinct word for the hue before it, calling such tones yellow-red or, in Old English, geoluread.

As a symbol orange sits between the warmth of red and the brightness of yellow and carries a mixed sense of energy, warmth and enthusiasm. Its strongest religious association is with Hinduism and Buddhism, where saffron or ochre robes mark the renunciant and the monk; the colour there is tied to fire, to sacrifice and to the ascetic's renunciation, and saffron has become a political as well as a devotional emblem in modern India. In the modern chakra system orange is assigned to the sacral centre, a recent Western placement. In the West it more often carries secular associations, autumn, harvest, and the high-visibility safety orange of the twentieth century, than any liturgical meaning.