A legend of the Valencia area tells, that when king Jaime 1st came to Valencia in the re-conquest against the Arabs, during the siege of the city, a rural girl from a farm house approached him while he was still mounted on his horse to offer him a bowl with a cold and sweet drink.

The King, looking at the whitish liquid that was resting in the bowl, asked the girl if it was milk. The girl answered him and said that it was milk, but of tiger nut, and asked him to try it. The King Jaime 1st surprised by the flavour of the drink exclaimed:

Another theory states that actually the word comes from the Latin word "hordeata", which means "barley". This makes no sense as the drink extracted from the barley is beer and curiously not called 'orgeat'.