Endless Thread - Oranges and Bucket Lists

Episode Date: May 5, 2023

This week, we have two stories about etymology. What can words teach us about culture, trade, memory, and the world around us? First up, which “orange” came about first: the fruit or the color? We also discuss the history of the term “bucket list” — a saying that is so embedded in our culture, we forget that it was only formally coined 16 years ago.

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WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Hey, producer, Megan Cattell. Hi, host Amory Severson. Hello? How are you doing? Hello, hello. I'm doing great. I'm really happy to talk to you.

Yeah, I'm happy to talk with you too. So today, Amory, I'm here to talk with you all about oranges. So how did this all start? Oranges and you. Yeah. Right. It's not a topic I usually think about a lot, but it started several months ago with a little nighttime scroll on Instagram, a little bedtime procrastination scroll. Not sure if I should admit that on air. Of course you should. We all do it. I was putting away. Okay, that makes me feel a little better. I was supposed to be putting away my devices for the night. but I was just scrolling and I saw a post from BuzzFeed's Apop Instagram account. So this is a Instagram account where they post tidbits about Asian and Asian diaspora culture. And there was a screenshot of a tweet posted by reality TV star and rapper Tim DeLago. And that's not his real name.

This is what he tweeted and it was reposted on BuzzFeed Apop. So you know how orange is the name for the color and the fruit? And it's Naranha in Spanish for the fruit and the color? Well, it's the same for Thai. Fruit and color are the same. Somme. Is it the same for every language? Who decided we're all going to do this?

And my first reaction was, wait, wait, this guy has a point. I never thought about this, but the word for the fruit and the color is the same in Mandarin too. It's the same word. It's Cheng Zi. And I was like, wait, I never thought about this before how it's the same in Spanish, Chinese, and I was like, okay, this is a phenomenon,

which I need to get to the bottom of. Can I share an early theory? And I'm, of course, very happy for you to prove me wrong, swiftly and decisively. But I don't know. My kind of chicken egg theory is that the color came first and that we call that fruit orange because that was one of the first things in nature that humans found to be that, well, no, because then we wouldn't have known that

that color exists. Okay, I'm already, I'm already just proving my theory. You are onto something. You know, sometimes we name colors after objects if that color is a bit more unique to nature. For example, turquoise, turquoise, you know, the gemstone, and then the blue-green color is also turquoise. So. Yeah, or lavender. Right. Lavender is a good example. So there are other things in nature where it's something a bit more unique. So we name that object first and we name the color from that object. But before we get to, you know, the reason why orange is the name for the fruit and the color, because there is a reason. I also just wanted to share with you. how I was, Amory, I was just DMing this post like crazy. To all of my friends who speak a different language, just to see, is it the same word?

Like, I just wanted to, I just wanted to double check and hear from them. So this is what some of them had to say. My name is Yajee. I grew up between Korea and Canada and now live in New York. And I think a lot of Koreans might say just the word orange-orangee to refer to both the color as well as the fruit, but actually the word for the color in Korean is Chuangeng and the word for fruit is just orangei. Hi, my name is Nasea. I grew up in Queens speaking both Bengali and English at home. Today I'm here to tell you that the word for

orange, both the color and the fruit is the same in Bangla and the way to say it is Komola. So that's kō-mola which means both the fruit and the color. And it's funny because it sort of reminds me of the name Kamala, which, as you know, is the name of the vice president. But it's Komola, not Kamala, which is funny. This is my friend Fatma, who I met in grad school and is originally from Cairo, Egypt. In Arabic, the fruit is spelled Bortoan, and the color is spelled or pronounced Bortoani. So again, the fruit is pronounced Bortoan, the colors pronounced Bortoani. And the only difference is that there is another letter added to the color. And I think the purpose of it is just to differentiate between the

fruit and the color, even though they're the same word. Wow. So this really is a phenomenon. Yes, this is. And lastly, there was another person in my neighborhood I just had to talk to. He's a friend. He's actually my fiance's best friend, but he's my friend and ex-neighbor from New York. My full name is Asker Ghosh. I am 34 years old. I am a software engineer and I am from India. Okay, but where in India? Varanasi, India. And like, what is the, because there are many languages in India, so what language do you speak, like mostly? So my mother tongue is Bengali, but I grew up in a province, which people mostly speak Hindi. Okay, so in your hometown, when you want to buy an orange to eat,

what do you call the fruit? Santara. And then what about the color orange? That's naranghi. Narangi. Naranghi. Okay. Okay, so that's like the one language I've encountered where it's like different.

You know, after talking to Bascar, I had to do some real research. Like, why Hindi the words are different. But then for a lot of other languages around the world, it's the same word, orange. So oranges come from China, and they also come from India. So its native habitat is from India. And in this 2012 article from Mental Floss that I found, it's called What Came First, the color orange of the fruit,

They said that orange culture spread from India and the east coast of Africa throughout the eastern Mediterranean region through Roman conquest, the development of Arab trade routes, and the expansion of Islam contributed significantly to this dispersal. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, so the word Naranji that Bascar said in Hindi, that came from San Francisco. Sanskrit, nirangia. So from Sanskrit to Hindi, you see that kind of direct correlation. But then the trajectory includes the Persian nirange, the Arabic nirange, and then regional Italian examples like niranza and nirons. And then you get into Spanish, nirangha, and then into French, nirang, and then nrange, and then orange to English, orange. So it's spread from there. Okay, so why did the term for the fruit

spread, but not the other term for the color? Well, I tried to piece this together with also some linguistic research, so not just like fruit, citrus research and trade research, but trying to see the development of English, like throughout the centuries. So I learned from other sources, like this website called Lit Hub, that back in a play by Chaucer in the 1390s, a fox's color was described as betwixt yellow and red. So there was no, so it was common. Yep, this is, this is for real. Before the 16th and 15th centuries, it was common for a lot of languages around. the world, English included, to describe orange as just a yellow red or a gold red. There was no

color for that perfect combo of 50% yellow, 50% red mixed together. So as those trade routes were developing from India throughout the Middle East and they extended into the rest of Europe, and oranges were coming more and more common, that's when we just said. hey, we're going to call this color orange. Like, it's not just yellow-red, it's not betwixt yellow and red anymore. It's going to be called orange. And is there like an etymological significance behind that word, orange? Yeah, actually, the original meaning of the word nirangia in Sanskrit,

way back when, before oranges were introduced, that word meant perfumed or fragrant. And I guess as the oranges came in from China, the fruit smelled so good that they wanted to call this new fruit nirangia. And then as the fruit spread from India and to the rest of Europe, nirangia became nironha in Spanish. And the word perfumed, like lost its meaning. And it just became associated with the name of the fruit. And by the time oranges got to France, they were called the orange. that's where you can kind of hear that connection between, you know, the transformation of the word and how it came to be in English, like la orange, orange. You know what I mean?

So do you hear what I'm saying? Yeah, you hear the connection to the naranj, naranji. Orange. Yes. Okay. So that, okay, this is coming together beautifully in my brain. Naranha or Naranji. It was Naranji, yes.

in Hindi or something... Yeah, Naranji. Naranji. Yeah. And if you say that a certain way, it's like, orange, orange. Exactly. You hear that separation, right?

And in fact, like we talked about earlier, there's a lot of different specific shades. A lot of languages don't have specific words for colors like magenta or chartreuse or... Right. Or turquoise. It just kind of spread because there are so few things in nature that have that specific shade and perfect combo of yellow and red. So like in English, they just adopted it and said, okay, we're going to call that color orange after the fruit. A lot of other countries follow suit and I guess did the same. Well, Megan, this was fascinating. And I'm now craving a what was the term betwixt of? Red and yellow. A fox is for betwixt yellow and red.

The juice of a betwixt of yellow and red fruit. So I'm going to go do that and let's take a little break. And then when we come back, I have a story for you about the origin of language. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into us. other kinds of stories. Stories about policing or politics. Country music.

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Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. Okay, we're back. And Megan, I have another language-related story for you. But this one has to do with a particular. term that people think has been around forever, and it turns out maybe it was not, because nothing has really been around forever, but this really shocked people, including a listener named Amanda Everlove, which is an amazing name, Amanda. Amanda wrote to us recently, and she said, I came across this tweet this morning and

immediately had my mind blown. The tweet reads, no one believes me that the bucket list, as a term, was not in common usage before that movie came out, but I swear to God it's true. Huh. Megan, are you familiar with this term, bucket list? I believe so. Was she talking about that movie back about 10 years ago? What movie was this? Okay, so this was 15, 16 years ago now. It was a movie called The Bucket List. It came out in 2007. It was directed by Rob Reiner, and it stars Morgan, Freeman and Jack Nicholson.

Yeah. And they're two guys who meet when they have to share a hospital room and they find out that they both have terminal lung cancer. And then they proceed to go skydiving together. They ride a motorcycle on the Great Wall of China.

They go to the Taj Mahal and Mount Everest and they go on a safari and so forth and so forth. And so this tweet who was written by someone named Kath Barbadoro Yes, Kath Barbadoro, another great name. Tips a hat to this movie as being the origin.

And Amanda Everlove writes, How did a concept so ubiquitous start with a movie that no one has ever even seen? Have you seen this movie? I'm guessing not because... No, I have not seen it, but I just remember... I remember seeing the advertisements on TV and online. So it was... Because, you know, Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson,

I mean, these are legendary actors. Exactly. But I never saw it. Exactly. Yeah, it wasn't like a highly acclaimed film, but as you have hinted at, it was everywhere. It was highly promoted, superstar power in it. You probably saw a trailer for it. Amanda goes on in her email to us, how do I not remember first learning about the concept

and instead feel like I've known it my entire life, even though that's demonstrably untrue? Help. So. Step one. I looked into this tweet from Kath Barbadoro, and that really only got me so far because this Twitter account no longer exists. So this person potentially nopes out of Twitter, but you can still see the replies to this tweet. And the replies talk quite a bit about the trailer for the movie in which Morgan Freeman's character spells out the concept of the bucket list, as if this is a brand new concept that no one would have been. familiar with before. My freshman philosopher professor signed this exercise and called it a bucket list.

We're supposed to make a list of all the things we wanted to do in our lives before we kick the bucket. Cutsie. So this movie, The Bucket List, was written by a screenwriter named Justin Zackham. And it was inspired by his very own what he called List of Things to Do before I Kick the Bucket, which he later shortened to Justin's Bucket List. Much tidier. Megan, do you want to guess what the first item on Justin's bucket list was? Um, go skydiving?

Yes, fair, good guess. In his case, as a screenwriter, it was to have a movie made by a major Hollywood studio. Oh, whoa, meta. Right? So that happens. So, the term has been around for at least 16 years, because, that's when the movie came out, 2007. And although that's not as long as most people would have thought, it's gotten a lot of play during that time. And across a wide swath of the culture, including politics, President Obama memorably used the term at the 2015 White House Correspondence Dinner.

After the midterm elections, my advisors ask me, Mr. President, do you have a bucket list? And I said, well, I have something that rhymes with bucket list. You know, one kind of theory is just that it's had a great 16 years. Like, it's just, it's really spread across the culture and infiltrated, you know, politics and music and every other kind of corner of culture. Yeah, I feel like every time I go on Instagram or TikTok, I get those bucketless destinations that you should, go to in Japan or, you know.

That's such a great point that like from a marketing standpoint, bucket list was like a jackpot. That of course, yeah, you've been wanting to take this trip. Who knows, you could drop dead. Any one of us could drop dead any second. You better take this trip right now while you're thinking of it. So Ben Zimmer, who's a pretty well-known and respected linguist and lexicographer, wrote a piece about the phrase's origins for the Wall Street Journal back in 2015. And he did confirm the origins of the term that it was this screenwriter who developed this list of things he wanted to do before he kicked the bucket, turns it into a movie, and now all of a sudden we think we've known this phrase forever.

And Miriam Webster has this online feature called Time Traveler, which another person in the Twitter thread linked to. Yeah. And so this marks the first time that particular words or phrases were used in. print. And according to Merriam Webster's time traveler, bucket list was first used in print in 2006. So probably in promotional materials for the movie, the bucket list. Although someone else in that Twitter thread also cited the screenplay as having been written back in 1999. So it might even be even older than that, but still it goes back to this screenplay. I should note that other people in this Twitter thread. They're saying things like, you know, no way. My uncle had a bucket list long before this movie came out. So I have some theories here. Maybe this person's uncle and many other folks did have

lists of things that they wanted to do before they died. That's not a crazy concept that you might write down a list of goals as wild and adventurous as they may be. But did they call those lists bucket lists? Or are they misremembering calling them bucket lists because the term now, as we've said, has gotten so popular and they're just applying that term retroactively to this list of things that they wanted to do before they died. Maybe this is just another example of the Mandela effect at play here. It's also possible that just the idea of life lists or goals is so powerful that we're conflating our familiarity with that concept and with the idea of a bucket list, with the idea of calling it a bucket list. And I should also say that it is possible that

someone before screenwriter Justin Zackham really did call their list of things to do before they kicked the bucket, a bucket list. But maybe they just didn't write a screenplay about it. It just didn't catch on to mainstream culture yet. Like it didn't catch on. Or they weren't even trying to make it catch on to mainstream culture because it was just like an inside joke with their family or something, you know? It's like someone else in the Twitter thread compared this to fetch, you know, like they, wow, this guy really did make fetch happen. And, you know, we're not always trying to make fetch happen. Sometimes we just call something what we want to call it and we don't realize that someone else has like put it out there until there's a Twitter

thread that gets everyone up in arms about the origin of that term. So at this point in time, there is no proof that the term was documented as having existed before the screenplay for the bucket list. But what's less certain is the origin of the phrase that inspired the term bucket list, that phrase being kick the bucket. Yeah. Yeah. So Anatoly Lieberman, he's an etymologist for Oxford University's blog. He has declared the origin of Kick the Bucket, officially unknown. But its first use in print, in which it meant to die, was in something called the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.

That was published in 1785. Whoa. It sounds like a fun way, I gotta say. Sounds not safe for work. Right. And I'll also just say, if this episode inspires you to make your own bucket list, I want to offer some additional inspiration from my friend Kieran, who made Megan what is my all-time favorite bucket list. It has some of the more common things that you would expect on a bucket list, like, and commonplace for that matter.

Some of them are like, get married. You know, he wanted to make sure that he got married before he died or run a marathon. But it also has some very fun things and more unaccustomed. expected things. Like, one of them is to say, quick, follow that car and mean it. And he has a rule for himself that he can never remove anything from this list. Even if he knows there are things on there that he will never do and that he doesn't want to do anymore, he has to keep it on the list. So it's almost turned into kind of like a diary for him, documenting the things that he at one point in time wanted to do that he can look back on and see how he has changed as a person over the years.

So I really love that. I think, you know, by all means, make a bucket list. You don't have to stick to it. Maybe just use it as a way to kind of see how you're changing as a person. What I kind of learned from this is that, you know, from the bucket list story, there is a, a very specific point in time that we can trace back to this term being popularized and being added to the dictionary from this movie. It's also just a, you know, the orange story was a good reminder for me that language is intentional. There's a reason for, it's not just a random jumble

of vowels and consonants. Like language is full of history and language is also full of like stories of our past, like how the term spread over so many different countries, over so many different years. And you just forget that, wow, back in the day, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, oranges were once only available in Asia. The Western world did not have access to them. And just in these past few hundred years, that has changed. So yeah, these stories, both with bucketless and orange, it's just a nice reminder. reminder that, you know, there are reasons and, you know, good reasons why we say the things that we do. Whether it's a Hollywood movie or ancient trade routes.

Do you have any bucket list items yourself other than make an episode about oranges? Which you can cross right off. I would like to operate a sailboat and maybe not do a super. I don't think I have the skill to go very, very far on my own in a sailboat, but I would like to go and sail from like one island to another. That would be really cool. I will say one from my friend Kieran's bucket list item, which I think ties back to the orange story,

which is to eat for a day entirely from food I've farmed. Nice. Putting that on my bucket list. Grow an orange and eat it. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was produced and hosted by Megan Cattell and me, Amoranji Sievertson. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski.

Hey, want to tell us about something very specific or maybe a little offbeat, surprising, exciting on your bucket list? Send us a voice memo or a non-rength. voice memo to endless thread at wb ubr.org or you can always hit us up on reddit endlessthread.red. Or on Twitter we're at endless underscore thread. We'll talk to you next week. No kick in the bucket on us all right. Just keep eating those nirangis.

Okay, bye.