Orange Tattoo Meaning
Fortune, abundance, the golden apple, and the fruit that changed the world.
The orange is the golden fruit of fortune and abundance — the round, gold-colored fruit prized as a symbol of prosperity and good luck, the 'golden apple' that traveled from the East to give its very name to a color, the wedding fruit of fertility, the fruit whose spread across the world changed history. To carry the orange is to carry fortune, abundance, and the golden apple — the gold-bright fruit of prosperity and good luck, the golden treasure that journeyed from the East to remake the world, the fruit of wealth, fertility, and delight.
In Chinese culture the orange (jú, 橘) is one of the primary symbols of good fortune, prosperity, and luck — a meaning rooted in its color and form and in a play on words. The orange's bright color echoes gold, and its round shape suggests wholeness, completeness, and abundance; the gold-colored, round, abundant fruit naturally became an emblem of wealth and good fortune. And mandarins (tangerines) carry this further through language: the Cantonese word for mandarin (gam, 柑) is a near-homophone for the word for gold, so that the fruit is, in sound as in color, associated with gold and riches.
For these reasons, oranges and mandarins are an essential gift of Chinese New Year — exchanged and displayed in great abundance during the festival, given to family, friends, and hosts as wishes for prosperity, wealth, and good fortune in the coming year. To give oranges at the New Year is to give the wish for prosperity made into a fruit, a golden token of abundance and luck. The orange is thus, in Chinese tradition, the golden fruit of fortune — the bright, round emblem of prosperity, wealth, and the blessings of the new year. The Chinese orange is the golden fruit of fortune and prosperity, the essential gift of the New Year. The Chinese orange is the golden fruit of fortune — one of the primary symbols of good fortune and prosperity, its bright color echoing gold and its round shape suggesting wholeness and abundance, and mandarins (whose Cantonese name gam is a near-homophone for gold) doubly associated with riches, making oranges and mandarins the essential gift of Chinese New Year (exchanged and displayed in abundance as wishes for prosperity and good fortune) — the wish for prosperity made into a fruit, the golden token of abundance and luck.
The English word 'orange' derives ultimately from Sanskrit nāraṅga through Persian nārang, Arabic nāranj, Spanish naranja — the fruit carried its name with it along the trade route. Before the fruit arrived in England, there was no word for the color orange in English — things now called orange were described as 'red' or 'yellow-red'; the fruit named the color. The golden apples of the Hesperides in Greek myth — guarded by a dragon, growing at the edge of the world, one of Hercules's labors to steal — are generally identified by classicists as oranges or citrus fruit, which reached the Mediterranean via Arab trade before the myth was recorded in its current form, or alternatively as quinces. The navel orange (Citrus sinensis 'Washington') traces to a single mutant branch discovered in a Brazilian monastery in the early 19th century CE — every navel orange in the world is a clone of that one tree, propagated by cuttings since the 1820s. The Portuguese established the first European orange orchards in Lisbon in the 15th century CE — the word 'Portugal' became the word for orange in Greek (portokáli), Romanian (portocală), and Arabic (burtuqāl).
Orange across cultures
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