Wyatt Baldwin

OK, maybe this is dumb, but I was sitting around (gettin’ all deep ‘n’ shit) wondering which came first, orange or oranges. More precisely, which was named “orange” first, and which was named after the other?

Lauren and I remembered that oranges were invented first (by God, of course) and then the name for the color called orange came after because that’s what Adam decided to name it, and Adam was made after the Earth (I think they called it “The Firmament” back then) and all the stuff God decided (or whatever that quasi-mental process would have been like for Him) to take seven days to put on it. Of course, the color called “orange” came (i.e., in the form of light) before the the fruit called “orange” and the name “orange” for them both.

Let’s recap because, honestly, I’m not sure that made any sense: God made light (i.e., the infamous “Let there be light.”), including, presumably, the segment of it that would later be known as “orange.” Later God, after taking a few days or so to do some other stuff, made the fruits that would come to be called “orange”s. A little while after that, God made Adam and told him he had to name everything (bummer, dude, but then again I guess there wasn’t much else to do back before TV and shopping and everything). So, the big question is, did Adam name the colors first and then the fruits (that would seem to make sense since God made the colors first¹, but not everything has to make “sense,” at least not as you and I understand it) or vice versa?

My working hypothesis is that Adam named the colors, then ran out of names for things (you get kind of dumb when you lose a rib like that, I think), but he noticed that, “Hey, these fruit thingies have some sort of visual similarity with that part of the light that I cleverly named ‘orange’ earlier! I think if I give them the same name, it’ll be OK because people will be able to work out which one is meant from the context.”

I’m sure this is a case of “The Internet to the Rescue,” but I’ll probably have to check later because I’m too burnt out right now to do the research (I was up all night working on a resume and cover letter and almost all of the content of this site AND twiddling with the layout and style).

¹ This brings up another question: before stuff and after light was made, was there color as such, given that there were no objects for the light to shine on and be partially absorbed/partially reflected by?