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jacobwilliamroy

In arabic the both the noun and adjectives for "orange" roughly transliterates to "bortuqal":

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What's the word for "Portugal" in arabic? "bortughal" (that is also not a good transliteration)

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Arabic is my favorite.

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In Persian, "orange" as a fruit is also "portaghal". But the color is "narenji". And then there's another citrus fruit quite close to the orange called a "narenj", that you can't usually find in the West.

Interestingly, nobody eats the "narenj" directly. They usually squeeze its juice on a fish dish. It gives it a very nice flavour.

Wikipedia identifies that fruit as

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_orange

I don't know if I've ever had it or not!

Edit: corresponding Farsi Wikipedia link: https://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%86%D8%A7%D8%B1%D9%86%D8%AC

Bitter oranges make the best marmalade

"Clementines"[1] are a fruit related to oranges that are commonly sold in grocery stores where I live, but the country they are sourced in varies. I've found the best ones seem to be from Portugal or Spain.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clementine

Wiktionary confirms that the name of the fruit came from the name of the country:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D8%A8%D8%B1%D8%AA%D9%82%D8%A...

(via Greek, via Venetian!)

In Turkish, orange is called „Portakal“. Reason is, this fruit was introduced to Ottoman soil by Portuguese sailors. Probably Turkish people heard the name first from North African Arabs living in Ottoman Empire, and they started to use this word.

Kind of the same concept as in Swedish with ”apelsin” for orange (the fruit). apel + sin = Apple from China.

I was reading comments to see if anybody mentioned the Russian words for orange color and fruit. "apelsin" is the word for the fruit and must have come over from Western Europe but the word for the color is "oranzhevuy" which is just "naranj" with the adjective suffix.

Oh, cool. It's the same in Greek:

πορτοκάλι = Portokali = Orange

Πορτογαλία = Portogalia = Portugal

Portocaliu is orange in Romanian.

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