In Europe and the United States, surveys show that orange is the colour most associated with amusement, the unconventional, extroversion, warmth, fire, energy, activity, danger, taste and aroma, the autumn and Allhallowtide seasons, as well as having long been the national colour of the Netherlands and the House of Orange.

The French word, in turn, comes from the Italian arancia,[7][8] based on Arabic نارنج (nāranj), borrowed from Persian نارنگ (nārang), derived from Sanskrit नारङ्ग (nāraṅga), which in turn derives from a Dravidian root word (compare நரந்தம்/നാരങ്ങ nārandam/nārañja which refers to bitter orange in Tamil and Malayalam).

Orange carnelians were significantly used during the Indus Valley Civilisation which was, in turn, obtained by the people of Kutch, Gujarat, India.

Orpiment was an important item of trade in the Roman Empire and was used as a medicine in ancient China although it contains arsenic and is highly toxic.

In mid-16th century England, the colour referred to as 'orange' was a reddish-brown, matching the deteriorated appearance of the fruit after a long journey from where it was grown in Portugal or |Spain Improvements in transportation and the introduction of an orange grove in Surrey allowed the fresh fruit to become more familiar in England, and the colour referred to as orange shifted in the 17th century toward its modern understanding.

It originated in 1163 in the tiny Principality of Orange, a feudal state of 108 square miles (280 km2) north of Avignon in southern France.

[22] The colour came to be associated with Protestantism, due to participation by the House of Orange on the Protestant side in the French Wars of Religion.

The House's arguably most prominent member, William III of Orange, became King of England in 1689, after the downfall of the Catholic James II in the Glorious Revolution.

[22] When the Dutch settlers living in the Cape Colony (now part of South Africa) migrated into the Southern African heartlands in the 19th century, they founded what they called the Orange Free State.

In 1797 a French scientist Louis Vauquelin discovered the mineral crocoite, or lead chromate, which led in 1809 to the invention of the synthetic pigment chrome orange.

The flowing red-orange hair of Elizabeth Siddal, a prolific model and the wife of painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, became a symbol of the Pre-Raphaelite movement.

Lord Leighton, the president of the Royal Academy, produced Flaming June, a painting of a sleeping young woman in a bright orange dress, which won wide acclaim.

During World War II, US Navy pilots in the Pacific began to wear orange inflatable life jackets, which could be spotted by search and rescue planes.

A herbicide called Agent Orange was widely sprayed from aircraft by the Royal Air Force during the Malayan Emergency and the US Air Force during the Vietnam War to remove the forest and jungle cover beneath which enemy combatants were believed to be hiding, and to expose their supply routes.

[24][4] In Ukraine in November–December 2004, it became the colour of the Orange Revolution, a popular movement which carried activist and reformer Viktor Yushchenko into the presidency.

The painter Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo that in his paintings, he was trying to reveal "the oppositions of blue with orange, of red with green, of yellow with violet ... trying to make the colours intense and not a harmony of grey".

"[28] Van Gogh, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and many other Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters frequently placed orange against azure or cobalt blue, to make both colours appear brighter.

The United States Government and the European Union certify a small number of synthetic chemical colourings to be used in food.

The most common ones are: Because many consumers are worried about possible health consequences of synthetic dyes, some companies are beginning to use natural food colours.

[38] According to Buddhist scriptures and commentaries, the robe dye is allowed to be obtained from six kinds of substances: roots and tubers, plants, bark, leaves, flowers and fruits.

Saffron and ochre, usually made with dye from the curcuma longa plant or the heartwood of the jackfruit tree, are the most common colours.

The monks of the strict Vajrayana, or Tantric Buddhism, practised in Tibet, wear the most colourful robes of saffron and red.

The monks of Mahayana Buddhism, practised mainly in Japan, China and Korea, wear lighter yellow or saffron, often with white or black.

Monks of the forest tradition in Thailand and other parts of Southeast Asia wear robes of a brownish ochre, dyed from the wood of the jackfruit tree.

Lifeguards on the beaches of Los Angeles County, both real and in television series, wear orange swimsuits to make them stand out.

The Golden Gate Bridge at the entrance of San Francisco Bay is painted international orange to make it more visible in the fog.

[52] The US Signal Corps, founded at the beginning of the American Civil War, adopted orange and white as its official colours in 1872.

Orange was adopted because it was the colour of a signal fire, historically used at night while smoke was used during the day, to communicate with distant army units.

Prior to and during the Napoleonic Wars a pale shade of orange known as aurore ("dawn") was adopted as the facing colour of several cavalry regiments in the French army.

In the Royal Netherlands Air Force, aircraft may have a roundel with an orange dot in the middle, surrounded by three circular sectors in red, white, and blue.