The word “Orange” does not occur anywhere in the King James Bible or to my knowledge any other English Translations either. The modern Hebrew word for the Color Orange is Katom but like a lot of modern Hebrew words it is a recent addition to the language.
Hebrew isn’t the only Language however where acknowledging Orange as a distinct color is a recent development. Even English didn’t come up with the word Orange till like 500 years ago, the Color was named after the fruit not the other way around. And the Japanese Language didn’t have any word for Orange till it’s modern Westernization started.
How we classify and think about Colors is to a large extent culturally constructed, that doesn’t mean different cultures are literally not seeing the same things we see. But it does mean how we think about and classify them isn’t always the same.
Now a lot people make a lot of mistakes when choosing Blue to be the color they focus on for talking about this, Blue is actually one of the oldest Colors to get a word it in most languages, and I’ve seen at least one person spreading this “Ancients didn’t see the color Blue” myth say Blue isn’t in The Bible even though anyone as Biblically literate at me knows that the Veil of the Temple basically has the color scheme of the Bisexual Flag. The Hebrew word for Blue is Tekhelet, Red is Edom, Purple is Argaman, Greek is Yereq and Yellow is Tsahab.
I really started thinking about the subjectiveness of the very existence of Orange as a distinct color when I was watching MandJTV’s video about Pokémon Colors. Pokémon Home’s official Color designations for Pokémon can be subjectively disagreed with for many reasons. But a big part of it is them not having the color Orange at all, every Pokémon you are likely thinking of as an Orange Pokémon is classified as either Red or Brown.
The thing about calling Nintendo Officially wrong on this however is that the list of “Orange” Pokémon officially classified as Red includes Charmander and Charizard, Charizard is iconically the Box Art Mascot of Pokémon Red and FireRed in both Japan and the West and that is why they are often paired with the Human Character officially named Red.
As I thought about this I began to notice other ways in which Orange as a distinct color seems to be ignored in Japanese Media. There has never been an Orange Power Ranger to my knowledge because there has never been an Orange Sentai, at least not called Orange. Now Purple Rangers are also rare but that’s because Japan associates Purple with Shadows and Darkness and so that color is reserved for many Villains. There is an Anime literally called Orange, but I haven’t watched it yet so I have no idea what to expect.
When I first taught about Colors in School as a kid I was taught that Red, Blue and Yellow are the primary colors while Green, Purple and Orange are the secondary colors each made from combining two of the primary colors. That’s based on how paints are made, in terms of how Light and our Eyes work. It's actually a misleading system.
In our eyes the three Primary Colors are actually Green, Red and Blue with everything deriving from how they interact. Yellow is in fact the product of combining Red and Green while Orange is an imperfect Yellow that is more Red.
Besides the Fruit which the Color is now synonymous with, everything else you can think of as being Orange is more anciently culturally associated with either Red, Brown or Yellow. Fire, the Sun, sand and deserts, ect. Meanwhile Brown is really just Dark Orange and has itself been anciently associated with Red (Biblically many think the Red associated with Esau and David was probably Brown). Also think about how often people called Gingers (Red Haired) really have Orange hair.
I spent much of my life thinking I was mildly Color Blind where the Color Orange is concerned after struggling to distinguish that color from Yellow or Red. I didn’t even notice that Charmander and Charizard were technically not Red till I watched this video a few days ago. But now I know that both God and Anime see that color the same way I do.
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