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

[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).