The world's languages can be grouped into those which call oranges oranges, those which call oranges apples and those which call oranges Portugals.
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Of those languages which call oranges oranges, a guest consonant often makes a cameo appearance at the start: N in Spanish (naranja), L in Portuguese (laranja) and T in Catalan (taronja), while Italian (arancia) does without.
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It's ironic that they're called "portugals" in Turkey, because in Portugal a turkey is called a peru, though at least in Peru a turkey is called a turkey. Elsewhere (e.g. Poland, France), a turkey is called an Indian. Basically nobody knows where the bird came from.
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I think the word is Dravidian is origin, and it arrived in Europe with the N at the start, which was variously lost or replaced...
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Huh... Czechs call them pomeranč and when I think about, that's looks like some kind of a mashup between pomme and arrancia
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Yes, and Polish is the same. I couldn't find the etymology for these, but I might guess it's from the French which was historically "pomme d'orenge".
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in Arabic we call oranges : Burtuqal (the k pronunciation is different) but it is quite similar to Portugal
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Yes, I think Portuguese sailors brought the fruits to Turkey who named them after Portugal, and this was then adopted into Arabic and Greek.
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Fun fact: in Catalan _aranja_ is a pomelo/grapefruit. I thought the L appeared due to contraction of “the colour of l’orange”
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Could that explain the T in Taronja too?
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