You say портокал, I say برتقال

[qatarperegrine]

I noticed while traveling through Eastern Europe that, despite the fact that Eastern European languages come from vastly different language families, they all call oranges something like "portokal." Then I moved to Arabic and learned that the word for orange is برتقال, "burtuqal."

Today I learned where all these words come from: Portugal!

The earlier word for orange is from the Sanskrit nāraṅgaḥ, which is where Persian gets nārang, Spanish gets naranja, Japanese gets orenji and we get orange. But these all referred to the bitter Indian orange. It was Portuguese traders who started bringing the sweet orange, Citrus sinensis, back from China. And thus all along their trading route -- Uzbekistan, Georgia, Persia, Bulgaria, Greece, Italy -- the new orange got named for the Portuguese who brought it.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

and i thought some mysteries would never be solved...

caryl :-)

[materjibrail.livejournal.com]

I read somewhere that the "golden apples of the Hesperides" in Greek myths may have been oranges, earlier unknown. Care to do more sleuthing?

One does wonder how sweet and juicy they were if traded as fruit, unless it was the trees that were traded. Most of the places that you mention are warm enough. My first memory of seeing oranges on trees ( in Rome) I thought they were tied on like decorations! Too exotic to be on trees in the open garden!

[qatar.livejournal.com]

Actually, I came across reference to that, too! The other Polish word for "orange" is Pomarańcza, which comes from the Latin "Pomus aurantium," and the ancient Greek name for them was Χρυσομηλιά. So it appears that both the Greeks and the Romans called oranges "golden apples." None of the sources I was looking at mentioned the golden apples of the Hesperides, but I immediately thought of Atalanta.

In most of Northern Europe oranges are "Chinese apples" (northern German Appelsien, Dutch Sinaasappel, etc.).

[archdukechocula.livejournal.com]

Well, I guess you answered my question. Heh.

err

[andreas_schaefer]

Apfelsinen which makes then kind of the sister of the apple ( Apfel=apple is male , Apfelsine is female and -sine sometimes works as suffix to denote the female counterpart. )Thomas and Thomasine )

---

offtopic:
http://www.wdr5.de/sendungen/leonardo/sendungsdetailseite.html?tx_wdr5ppfe_pi1%5BshowUid%5D=49948&tx_wdr5ppfe_pi1%5BbeitragsUid%5D=3323&cHash=40d8f72191
http://www.wdr5.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Sendungen/Leonardo/2008/05/Manuskripte/ms080528SchwerpunktKatar.pdf
"Das Emirat Katar kauft sich eine Forscher-Oase" == Emirate Qqatar buys itself a research-oasis.
On public radio here - ( though the channel is for intellectuals : lots of talk, culture: philosophy, science news - music tends to be contemporyry jazz - )

apples

[andreas_schaefer]

it occurs to me that apple may serve as generic fruit : there is also Erdapfel (earthapple ) for potato. ( so the local dish of potatoes and apples cooked together and seved with fried blood-sausage as "Himmel un Aeed" [ dial.: heaven and earth ] (urk!) which in turn gives the name to quite a number of pubs/country inns. )

Re: apples

[qatar.livejournal.com]

Potatoes are earth-apples in French, too.

The Romans apparently used the word apple as a generic fruit, since in addition to "golden apple" for orange they used "seeded apple" (pomum granatum) for pomegranates -- which I guess you call Granatapfel? Coincidentally, some English speakers call pomegranates "Chinese apples."

In English the only apple-as-generic-fruit example I can think of is the pineapple. I wonder if there are others.

Re: err

[qatar.livejournal.com]

Oops, the one I said was German was apparently also Dutch. So thanks for the German version.

[archdukechocula.livejournal.com]

They don't call oranges portokal in the former Yugoslavia (Or at least in Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia). There they call them pomorandza or narandza. They call them narancs in Hungary. Both sound similar enough to naranja that they are probably from the same root. That's kind of funny that the hungarians and the balkans would be using the persian word, especially given their proximity to the dalmatian coast. Wonder why that is. Only common theme I see is the Austro-Hungarian empire, and you would think they would be more likely to have that same exposure to Portugese trade than to be using that linguistic anachronism. I wonder why that is.

[qatar.livejournal.com]

I remember portokal being used in more countries than I can now find conformation for.

This may be because what I actually remember is buying Fanta Portokal, so maybe Fanta uses that word in a variety of countries even if it's not the primary word for orange (as in Poland).

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

FTR, in PT it's "laranja" (/larãʒa/).

[http://users.livejournal.com/_tove/]

And then there's the majestic Wild Turkey.

[qatar.livejournal.com]

Huh. Oddly enough, when Chuck and I were talking about the portokal thing earlier, he brought up d’inde as another example of a food named after somewhere other than where it's actually from. I didn't realize there were so many other erroneous geographical names for the wild turkey.

Nice catch

[shmuelisms.livejournal.com]

I love this type of linguistic sleuthing.

Another fascinating example is the American "Turkey". The Hebrew name for this bird, is in fact, {Hodu} the word for "India", but contrary to what Wikipedia explains ("The many references to India seen in common names go back to a combination of two factors: first, the genuine belief that the newly-discovered Americas were in fact a part of Asia"), I think that this is a reference to the fact that initially, America was known as the New-Indies.

And rooting for the Home-Team, another neat example, are Scallions, so named for the Philistine port of Ashkelon, from which they were introduced to ancient Europe.

Re: Nice catch

[qatar.livejournal.com]

Heh, you and _tove brought up turkeys simultaneously.

I only realized afterwards how many orange relatives are named for geographic regions, too: mandarins, tangerines, etc.

Yeah

[shmuelisms.livejournal.com]

But do you have any clue as to what the Arabic origins of the name Lemon are? The Hebrew names for various Citrus fruits, follow different patterns:

• Oranges being Tapuz, a modern acronym of Tapu'ach Zahaz, use the older European "Golden Apples".
• Lemons, being Limon, take after the Arabic, and
• Grapefruit being Eshkolit, takes after the English, in being named for the "clusters" (an Eshkol) that they grow in.

Aside from newly invented citrus species, the only one that has a unique Hebrew name is the Citron, known as the Etrog (which goes back to the Aramaic). This because of its' ritual importance.

Re: Yeah

[qatar.livejournal.com]

Wow. Most appropriate user icon EVER.

Until you said that, I didn't even know that "lemon" was originally an Arabic word, but indeed it was. The OED says that English gets the word lemon thus:

[ad. F. limon (now restricted to the lime; formerly of wider application) = Sp. limon, Pg. limão, It. limone, med.L. limon-em, related to F. lime: see LIME n.2 The words are prob. of Oriental origin: cf. Arab. laimun, Pers. limun, Arab. limah, collective lim, fruits of the citron kind, Skr. nimbu the lime.]

So it is an Arabic word, but not originally Semitic; it's borrowed from Persian, and thus originally from Sanskrit.

Re: Nice catch

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

The Portuguese name for this bird is "peru" (the country is also called "Peru").

[roseandsigil.livejournal.com]

I assume the Japanese word was borrowed from English. My understanding is that the n disappeared in the English word when it went from "a norange" to "an orange." Similarly, "a napron" and "a nuncle".

[(Anonymous)]

Not in Russian, though: апельсин

[http://users.livejournal.com/syd___/]

which is like the "northern German Appelsien"
that qatar mentioned earlier.
:) (i like being able to sound out Cyrillic letters)

[qatar-cat.livejournal.com]

And Χρυσομηλιά are actually the bitter variety of citrus used only to make sweets :)