User:JRM/Orange

Take a deep breath, for I am about to tell you the long-winded tale of my part in the development of orange on our fair Wikipedia. It's a bit of a shaggy dog story, but it taught me a thing or two about the editing process, and maybe you can get some interesting tidbits out of it too. For sure, I'll never think about orange the same way again... in whatever meaning.

In the beginning

We begin our tale at November 2, 2004, when orange is an innocent disambiguation page with a lot of entries, some dubious. In short, your average disambiguation page.

Except that this one mentions the word "orange" itself, as not rhyming with any other word. This reminds me of Tom Lehrer's attempt at doing so, so I mention it, pull in Mother Goose for good measure, and that's that [1].

The cleanup

Then, after reading Wikipedia:Disambiguation, I clean up the disambig page according to its policies, by weeding out the things put that just have "orange" in the title without actually being named "orange", like Orange Free State and Orange River. Additionally, I fix all links to the disambig page while I'm at it, this being quite overdue. There's still nothing special going on here.

And the Word was Orange

Then it occurs to me that the disambiguation page is getting rather crowded by my cutesy additions of the unrhymability of orange. So I factor them out into orange (word). Interestingly, the unrhymability had first been moved from orange (colour), then copied to orange (word), then the latter was turned into a redirect when it was noticed it was duplicating!

So I reinstate orange (word), and mention it on English words with uncommon properties. All is right with the world, and I sit back and admire my admittedly modest but esthetically pleasing efforts.

Appleyard upsets the orange applecart

Then Anthony Appleyard comes along, puts the House of Orange and the Orange Order back into orange (disambiguation), and adds some etymology from orange (fruit) to it for good measure. Naturally, I am appalled. I have a long talk with him about why he's wrong to add back the entries I so diligently removed, and end up arguing myself into a corner and reluctantly agreeing that, well, he may be on to something. So the "new" entries stay, after some polishing from both sides.

Then I turn my attention to the new etymology section. It reads:

The word orange has two origins:-

• As the fruit, via Arabic naranj from India: e.g. Hindi nārangī : later, "a norange" became "an orange".
• As the town of Orange, France, where the Dutch royal family originated from. The Orange Order named themselves after the Dutch royal family, who also ruled Britain at the time.

The first thing I wonder is whether orange really has two origins—isn't the town named for the fruit? I post a question to the reference desk inquiring to the etymology of the name of the town. In response to my concerns, Anthony appropriately amends all alarming additions accordingly:

The word orange has two origins:-

• As the fruit, via Arabic naranj from India: e.g. Hindi nārangī : later, "a norange" became "an orange". The color was named from the fruit.
• As the town of Orange, France; this name is probably Gaulish in origin. The House of Orange-Nassau originated from there (and from Nassau in Germany), and includes the royal family of the Netherlands, who ruled Britain when the Orange Order formed and named themselves.

This doesn't satisfy me, au contraire. "The name is probably Gaulish in origin"? Well, duh! I look at Orange, France and see (as Anthony undoubtedly did) that the town was originally a Roman settlement in Gaul—d'ya really think the name could be Gaulish?

French and Romans and Celts, oh my!

My question on the reference desk meets with an alarming silence. Then I recall that I speak French—poorly, so it takes a while to recall—and I cruft a more-or-less intelligible question and post it on the French equivalent of the Village Pump. (It's called "Le Bistro", incidentally, which I can't help but think of as hilarious to English speakers.)

I'm greeted cordially (possibly because I'm not American... no, just kidding, really), and an attentive Frenchman gives me the link to the official site of the village (no, it wasn't that easy to find, actually, so I didn't cross the language barrier for nothing.) It mentions the city's Roman name: Arausio, but then jumps right to the medieval era, with the city called Orange—no explanation inbetween.

Of course, then I notice that the Arausio information is actually in the English article, which is just poorly sectioned, causing me to miss it (so I did cross the language barrier for nothing). I fix the sectioning and notice the Roman legion that's supposed to have founded the town seems to be missing from the Wikipedia. So I pick the one that resembles it the most from the mentioned List of Roman legions (I'm not kidding) and put it in. Some Googling turns up that "Arausio" comes from a Celtic water god, so I put that in as well. I'm still not any closer to an etymology.

Back on the French Wikipedia, my francophone friends take offense at my overly bold conjecture that, since the name jumps right into Orange in the middle ages, we can assume that it derives from the fruit. According to the trusty Robert of one (roughly as revered a resource to francophones as the Oxford English Dictionary is to anglophones—and that's properly mangled "row-bear" to all you anglophone barbarians out there), the village name was older. As badly portrayed French in worse English comedies always say in such situations: zut alors!

A norange, a norange, my principality for a norange

This indeterminate state of affairs annoys me tremendously, so I dig in my heels and start searching. Where the hell does orange come from, and whose job is it to give fruity names to French villages, anyway?

This search takes several hours. In the meantime, of course, I notice that my super-informed modifications of Orange, France were complete and utter horse droppings, the kind that can confuse generations of readers before someone comes to set the record straight. Thankfully, I myself am the person to do so, but my left eye sports a nervous twitch for the next few minutes or so.

Finally, after a lot of checking, cross-checking, double-checking, re-evaluating and hyphe-nating, my complete layman's guide to the word orange is done, which deftly slays a few common misconceptions and confusions. No, English never had a word "norange", and no, the Dutch monarchy never picked a fruit to name a nice principality after (the lazy uppermost-class bastards never picked fruit in their life).

The terrible burden of etymology can be lifted from orange (fruit). I send off a quick note of thanks to Anthony for inspiring a buttload of work. And as butts go, the crack of dawn is making an obscene display outside. I refresh my watchlist one last time, and lo, my Edits are Most Recent. All is well in my corner of Wikipedia. I go off to perform the number two activity of Wikipedia editors: sleep. Before my head hits the pillow, I involuntarily recall the number three activity: explaining to the rest of the world why you're behind on your regular work. And I rest easy still...