Orð og tunga - 01.06.2013, Page 137

Susanne M. Arthur: Are Oranges Yellow?
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Appelsína, the only used term in Modern Icelandic, appears in print in
the middle of the nineteenth century in a recipe for "Rúgbrauðs kaka"
'rye bread cake' in Þóra Andrea Nikólína Jónsdóttir's Ný matreiðslubók
ásamt ávísun um litun, pvott o.fl. (1858:119). The term is a Danish or
German loanword (see e.g. Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon 1989:22). Con-
sidering that recipes are generally written to be intelligible to all, it
is obvious that appelsína was the predominant term by the time the
cookbook was printed. Similarly Páll Sveinsson (1862:94) states "Or-
ange-ávextir (appelsínur) voru fluttir frá Kína til Portúgal, 1547, og
komust þaðan út um suðurhluta Evrópu" ['Orange-fruits (China-ap-
ples) were brought from China to Portugal in 1547, and spread from
there through the southern parts of Europe']. The quotation shows
that appelsína was in this case used simultaneously alongside orange-
ávextir and was presumably equally or more readily understood at
the time.
Attempts to introduce the Icelandic term glóaldin 'glowing fruit'12
in the early twentieth century to replace the loanword appelsína failed.
This was presumably because, as Jón Hilmar Jónsson (1978:358) sug-
gests, the loanword entered the language quickly and was widely
accepted in a short time. ROH lists thirteen citations of glóaldin dat-
ing between 1929 (Helgi Pjeturss 1929:228) to 1972 (Halldór Laxness
1972:237).
Term Earliest Occurrence
eyjarepli ? mid-14th century
terms derived from pomerans 1723
gullepli (1745) 1784
terms derived from orange 1862
appelsína 1858
glóaldin 1929
Table 5. Summary oflcelandic termsfor the fruit orange (order as discussed in article).
actual orange. This kind of apple is available in Iceland, as for example iilustrated
by newspaper advertisements, such as in Þjóðviljinn (1951:7) or Dagur (1960:6),
where Cox Orange epli 'Cox Orange apples' are advertised next to appelsínur 'or-
anges.' It should be noted, however, that these advertisements are much younger
than Jón Jónsson Hjaltalín's article. It is, therefore, uncertain if Cox Orange apples
were known in the nineteenth century. Jón Jónsson Hjaltalín (1862:33) uses the
term as a size comparison in an article about echinoderms, which means that the
context does not allow for a definite interpretation of the term.
12 In the author's opinion, glóaldin may be a loose translation of the Latin malum au-
reum.