L’ungherese narancs ‘arancia’ – da un’altra prospettiva

Abstract

The widely held general opinion on the origin of the Hungarian noun narancs ‘orange’ is that it is a loanword from Northern Italian dialects. This study argues that the presumed etimons are not supported by relevant data. The most likely explanation for the origin of this word is that the Hungarian noun was taken from Croatian in which ‘orange’ is naranča. The Croatian word perfectly fits the phono-morphological structure of the Hungarian language, which can easily be explained. Beside this, its Croatian origin is also supported by cultural-historical facts. Theoretically, the possible Turkish origin of narancs cannot be excluded either but this line of argument requires further research.