Is there such a thing as orange?

[Ian61]

I have just purchased my first proper 'orange' paint. In the past I have only used orange for hair and have then done a blend and shade using reds then yellows. (An extreme, not very historical, example below). As a fan of red Leicester cheese I am well aware that in English the word orange is only a few hundred years old but I can't think of a time when it has come up in my historical reading. As it would not be difficult to make an orange dye it would seem logical it would have been seen. Did ancient Latin or Greek have a word for it? For Latin Google translate seems to come up with red variants or gold. The Greek is 'portokáli' but again this could be a more modern usage.
In short could we have had orange clad warriors in any of our Armies?

[Erpingham]

Aurnola was a medieval orange cloth colour.  However, I suggest we are talking bright orangey browns rather that clementine/ Dutch football shirt colour. Another colour called Roy (as in king) is recorded as bright tawney, so a light red brown shade. 

[Nick Harbud]

Can you not be arrested for your figure possessing a weapon like that? 

[Nick Harbud]

Bitter oranges, like the Seville variety used to make marmalade, are the result of cross-breeding with grapefruit.  Something that anyone who takes metformin should know about and avoid.

[Ian61]

Can you not be arrested for your figure possessing a weapon like that? 

Probably. My Gotrex model has certainly fought zombies a few times at the club back in the day and a lot else besides - so that axe may need some sharpening to qualify as a zombie knife.  

[Ian61]

Bitter oranges, like the Seville variety used to make marmalade, are the result of cross-breeding with grapefruit.  Something that anyone who takes metformin should know about and avoid.

I used to love an occasional grapefruit but some of the drugs that keep me walking around don't mix with it either.

[Ian61]

Aurnola was a medieval orange cloth colour.  However, I suggest we are talking bright orangey browns rather that clementine/ Dutch football shirt colour. Another colour called Roy (as in king) is recorded as bright tawney, so a light red brown shade. 

But there is another strand again. Does Brown exist? Look at options for fill colours and you won't find it although things randomly labelled yellow 10 or orange 7 may do the job (making those up on the fly but you know what I mean).  Finding nice browns is always tricky and I find differences often lost in artificial lighting which can be quite annoying.

[Jim Webster]

Bitter oranges, like the Seville variety used to make marmalade, are the result of cross-breeding with grapefruit.  Something that anyone who takes metformin should know about and avoid.

I used to love an occasional grapefruit but some of the drugs that keep me walking around don't mix with it either.

I suspect it is very common. You're not supposed to drink grapefruit juice if you're on statins. The problem is that as somebody who likes grapefruit juice and isn't forbidden for medical reasons, it can be remarkably difficult to find. (Unless you're talking about the very expensive stuff) 

[Andreas Johansson]

In older Swedish, orange was apparently considered a kind of yellow.  Before the loan orange supplanted it during the 19th and 20th centuries, the usual word for the colour was brandgul, lit. "fire-yellow".

[Erpingham]

Bitter oranges, like the Seville variety used to make marmalade, are the result of cross-breeding with grapefruit.  Something that anyone who takes metformin should know about and avoid.

Fortunately, people who take metformin should not be eating a lot of marmalade anyway - it's got shed-loads of sugar in it   

[Keraunos]

In older Swedish, orange was apparently considered a kind of yellow.  Before the loan orange supplanted it during the 19th and 20th centuries, the usual word for the colour was brandgul, lit. "fire-yellow".

Brandgul sounds very rich on the tongue - almost like marmalade! 

Out of period question : was Gustavus Adolphus' Yellow Regiment really yellow, or was it Brandgul?

[Nick Harbud]

Does Brown exist?

Not in traditional Cantonese.  They use a borrowed word meaning coffee-coloured.

 

[Erpingham]

I was rather surprised on looking at the origins of the English word brown to note that it is also the Welsh word for the colour.  Did it supplant an earlier native word?

More generally, the recognition of colour, as opposed to physically seeing them, does appear to have cultural component. 

[Ian61]

More generally, the recognition of colour, as opposed to physically seeing them, does appear to have cultural component. 

That is very true and another whole rabbit hole. Our rainbow colours come from Newton, to quote from the Met office article on them...

(from: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/weather/optical-effects/rainbows/colours-of-the-rainbow)
He [Newton] coined the idea that there are seven colours in a spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet (ROYGBIV). It is said that he actually only observed five colours, but added orange and indigo, to align the number of colours with the number of notes in the musical scale.

Another story is that he just added Indigo because he didn't like the idea that there were six primary colours. We have to remember Newton (the most famous of all hexakosioihexekontahexaphobes) wrote more total tosh than he did genius. Once he goes beyond the actual experiments and maths you have to take his work with massive pinches of salt. The problem is that his opinion on this topic carries such weight everyone in the English speaking world, and a lot beyond, are taught about ROYGBIV, challenge it if you dare!
PS. I tend to leave out indigo - as proof I give my garage door - I painted this in lockdown so only had a few paints (yellow, red and blue and a tail end of a grass green), the blue was a bit dark and spoils the effect a bit but in real life the purple looks better.

[Erpingham]

The problem is that his opinion on this topic carries such weight everyone in the English speaking world, and a lot beyond, are taught about ROYGBIV, challenge it if you dare!

Though all those years ago I remember my physics teacher (by no means a radical) saying that no-one since Newton has ever been able to see indigo 

We are drifting a bit from how ancient cultures viewed colours (especially orange and brown - no-one has raised the Greeks and green and blue yet).  I have among my various medieval interests the way in which things were named as opposed to how we approach them. The idea of strictly, categorically, defining objects like weapons or colours of cloth, seems to be alien to the medieval mind.  So many arguments, say, about medieval weapon types are not based on medieval descriptions but the cataloguing instincts of 19th century antiquaries and museum directors.