The original word for orange first made its appearance in Sanskrit as naranga. Sanskrit was the ancient language of India, with roots that go back to the 4th millennium BCE. Naranga wasn’t used to describe the color; rather it was used for the familiar citrus fruit, which was native to northern India.

From there, the term became narang in Persian, a language spoken by the ancestors of modern-day Iranians. According to etymologists, or word researchers, the term finally entered common European usage when the Moors, who were Arabs from Africa, settled in medieval Spain.