Orange

[Deleted]

This thing just came into my mind, Orange: does the fruit have the colour name or does the colour have the fruit name?

[Deleted]

Clearly the fruit has a colour name, I mean look at it, if I'd name it today I'd name it "Orange" because that's its main characteristic and my imagination sucks... The color orange has been around for quite a while and I doubt you'd name a color after a fruit =P

[Garnier Fructis]

I voted incorrectly in the poll above, but a google search reveals that the color is named after the fruit.

[Fifty Snakes]

The word referring to the color is named after the fruit. Its first recorded use in that regard was in 1512. Before that, the color was referred to by an Old English word meaning yellow/red.

[Deleted]

Seriously? O.O Mind = blown! I guess you learn something new every day rofl

[Cusco]

Clearly the fruit has a colour name, I mean look at it, if I'd name it today I'd name it "Orange" because that's its main characteristic and my imagination sucks... The color orange has been around for quite a while and I doubt you'd name a color after a fruit =P

It really depends, orange isn't exactly the most common color in nature, so it doesn't surprise me at all that the color is named after the fruit. It's way clearer than referring to the color as "the color that leafs have in fall, in between red and yellow", and pumpkins, flowers, butterflies, etc. can have a variety of colors, but oranges are always orange. Unless people had never seen oranges, but I'm assuming that the word formed at some colony, that it derives from another language ooor simply that oranges actually were qiute common in England, even back then.

[Adam Jensen]

Well, we call oranges "oranges" and we call yellow-red "orange" but we don't call the color orange "pumpkin"

So I'd assume we named the color after the fruit.

[Kalyyn]

What if they were named separately, and it's just a coincidence?

[Remilia]

What if they were named separately, and it's just a coincidence?

Yeah that's not going to happen. :P

Well, it'd be Fruit > Colour / Color (whatever).
Physical paint its red + yellow = orange~. However in the real world, not a lot of things are the color 'orange'. Granted in the real world not a lot of stuff are actually blue, as opposed to purple.

[Kalyyn]

Wikipedia:The colour is named after the orange fruit, introduced to Europe via the Sanskrit word nāranja. Before this was introduced to the English-speaking world, the colour was referred to (in Old English) as geoluhread, which translates into Modern English as yellow-red.

[Cusco]

Wikipedia:The colour is named after the orange fruit, introduced to Europe via the Sanskrit word nāranja.

...and to add to that, naranja is the Spanish word for both fruit and color. Although through quite a detour (but I highly suspect that there are a few steps in the middle of the Sanskrit-to-Europe journey as well).

Etymology
From Arabic **ر*ج (nāranj), from Persian **ر** (nārang), from Sanskrit नारङ्ग (nāraṅga, “orange tree”), itself of uncertain origin, possibly Dravidian.

[Kalyyn]

It just occurred to me that over half the people who answered the poll are wrong. Ask-the-audience seems to fail when there are only two options...