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

[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 )

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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.