> One might say that if SQL was so great there would be no ORMs

It's not like the ORMs exist without SQL. Their primary purpose is to provide a consistent interface between different flavors of SQL so the application developer doesn't need to care what database they're using.

For example, delimiting object names in Mysql uses ` and in Postgres uses ". The ORM will ostensibly have different adapters which take care of these differences without changing the application code.