Color name
Encyclopedia
A color term, also known as a color name, is a word
or phrase
that refers to a specific color
. The color term may refer to human perception of that color (which is affected by visual context), or to an underlying physical property (such as a specific wavelength of visible light). There are also numerical systems of color specification, referred to as color space
s.
s, such as "red", "brown", or "olive". Compound color words make use of adjectives (e.g. "light brown", "sea green") or multiple basic color words (e.g. "yellow-green").
(shades of red
, orange
, yellow
, green
, blue
, and violet
), saturation
("deep" vs. "pale"), and brightness
or intensity make up the HSI color space. The adjective "fluorescent" in English refers to moderately high brightness with strong color saturation. Pastel
refers to colors with high brightness and low saturation.
Some phenomena are due to related optical effects, but may or may not be described separately from the color name. These include gloss
(high-gloss shades are sometimes described as "metallic"; this is also a distinguishing feature of gold and silver), iridescence
or goniochromism (angle-dependent color), dichroism
(two-color surfaces), and opacity
(solid vs. translucent).
青 ' onMouseout='HidePop("92541")' href="/topics/Standard_Mandarin">Mandarin
and ao
in Japanese
) has a meaning that covers both blue and green
; blue and green are traditionally considered shades of "青." In more contemporary terms, they are 藍 (lán, in Mandarin) and 綠 (lǜ, in Mandarin) respectively. Japanese also has two terms that refer specifically to the color green, 綠 (midori which is derived from the classical Japanese descriptive verb midoru 'to be in leaf, to flourish' in reference to trees) and グリーン (guriin, which is derived from the English word 'green'). However, in Japan, although the traffic lights have the same colors that other countries' have, the green light is described using the same word as for blue, "aoi", because green is considered a shade of aoi; similarly, green variants of certain fruits and vegetables such as green apples, green shiso
(as opposed to red apples and red shiso) will be described with the word "aoi".
Similarly, languages are selective when deciding which hues are split into different colors on the basis of how light or dark they are. English splits some hues into several distinct colors according to lightness: such as red
and pink
or orange
and brown
. To English speakers, these pairs of colors, which are objectively no more different from one another than light green and dark green, are conceived of as belonging to different categories. A Russian will make the same red-pink and orange-brown distinctions, but will also make a further distinction between sinii and goluboi, which English speakers would simply call dark and light blue. To Russian speakers, sinii and goluboi are as separate as red and pink or orange and brown.
Hungarian
and Turkish
have two words for "red": piros and vörös- vörös is a darker red (Hungarian), and kırmızı and al (Turkish). Turkish
also has two words for "white": beyaz and ak. Similarly, Irish
uses two words for green
: glas denotes the green color of plants, while uaithne describes artificial greens of dyes, paints etc. This distinction is made even if two shades are identical.
(This last point, however, can be ambiguous, as native speakers may not always agree with each other.) Their analysis showed that, in a culture with only two terms, the two terms would mean roughly 'dark' (covering black
, dark colors and cold colors such as blue) and 'bright' (covering white
, light colors and warm colors such as red). All languages with three colors terms would add red
to this distinction. Thus, the three most basic colors are black, white, and red. Additional color terms are added in a fixed order as a language evolves: first one of green
or yellow
; then the other of green or yellow; then blue
. All languages distinguishing six colors contain terms for black, white, red, green, yellow, and blue. These colors roughly correspond to the sensitivities of the retinal ganglion cells, leading Berlin and Kay to argue that color naming is not merely a cultural phenomenon, but is one that is also constrained by biology—that is, language is shaped by perception.
As languages develop, they next adopt a term for brown
; then terms for orange
, pink
, purple
and/or gray, in any order. Finally, a basic term for light blue
appears.
The proposed evolutionary trajectories as of 1999 are as follows. 80% of sampled languages lie along the central path.
Today every natural language that has words for colors is considered to have from two to twelve basic color terms. All other colors are considered by most speakers of that language to be variants of these basic color terms. English
contains the eleven basic color terms "black," "white," "red," "green," "yellow," "blue," "brown," "orange," "pink," "purple" and "gray." Italian
and Russian
have twelve, distinguishing blue
and azure
. That doesn't mean English speakers cannot describe the difference of the two colors, of course; however, in English, azure is not a basic color term because one can say bright sky blue instead, while pink is basic because speakers do not say light red.
and magenta
are also abstract though they may not be considered 'basic color terms', either because they are considered by native speakers to be too rare, too specific, or subordinate hues of more basic colors (red in the case of maroon, or purple in the case of magenta).
Descriptive color words are words that are secondarily used to describe a color but primarily used to refer to an object or phenomenon. "Salmon
", "rose
", "saffron
", and "lilac
" are descriptive color words in English because their use as color words is derived in reference to natural colors of salmon
flesh, rose
flowers, infusions of saffron
pistils, and lilac blossoms respectively. Often a descriptive color word will be used to specify a particular hue of basic color term (salmon and rose [descriptive] are both hues of pink).
Colors in some languages may be denoted by descriptive color words even though other languages may use an abstract color word for the same color; for example in Japanese pink is "momoiro" (桃色, lit. "peach-color") and gray is either "haiiro" or "nezumiiro" (灰色, 鼠色, lit. "ash-color" for light grays and "mouse-color" for dark grays respectively); nevertheless, as languages change they may adopt or invent new abstract color terms, as Japanese has adopted "pinku (ピンク) for pink and "guree" (グレー) for gray from English.
The status of some color words as abstract or descriptive is debatable. The color "pink
" was originally a descriptive color word derived from the name of a flower called a "pink" (see dianthus
); however, because the word "pink" (flower) has become very rare whereas "pink" (color) has become very common, many native speakers of English use "pink" as an abstract color word alone and furthermore consider it to be one of the 'basic color terms' of English. "Purple
" is another example of this shift, as it was originally a word that referred to a dye
(see Tyrian purple
).
The word "orange
" is difficult to categorize as abstract or descriptive because both its uses, as a color word and as a word for an object, are very common and it is difficult to distinguish which of the two is primary. As a basic color term it became established in the early to mid 20th century; before that time artist's palettes called it "yellow-red". In English, the use of the word "orange" for a fruit predates its use as a color term; it is derived from the Sanskrit
"narang" or Tamil
"naraththai" via the Portuguese "laranja"; the derived form orangish as a color is attested from the late 19th century. by reference to the fruit. Nevertheless, "orange" (color) is usually given equal status to red, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, pink, gray, white and black (all abstract colors) in membership among the basic color terms of English. Based solely on current usage of the word, it would be impossible to distinguish whether the fruit is called an orange because of its color, or the color is so called after the fruit. (This problem is also illustrated by violet
and indigo
.)
Recently, a researcher at Hewlett-Packard, Nathan Moroney, has been performing an online experiment in unconstrained color naming in English and 21 other languages. He has published some of the results of this work and the experiment is ongoing.
lexicon of color terms. The disadvantage of these systems, however, is that they only specify specific color samples, so while it is possible to, by interpolating, convert any color to or from one of these systems, a lookup table is required. In other words, no simple invertible equation can convert between CIE XYZ and one of these systems.
Philatelists
traditionally use names to identify postage stamp color
s. While the names are largely standardized within each country, there is no broader agreement, and so for instance the US-published Scott catalog will use different names than the British Stanley Gibbons catalogue.
On modern computer systems a standard set of basic color terms is now used across the web color names
(SVG 1.0/CSS3), HTML color names
, X11 color names
and the .NET Framework
color names, with only a few minor differences.
The Crayola
company is famous for its many crayon colors, often creatively named.
In fashion and automotive colors the objective of naming is to enhance the perception of color through appropriate naming to fit the emotional context desired. Thus the same "poppy yellow" can become either the hot blooded and active "amber rage", the cozy and peaceful "late afternoon sunshine", or the wealth evoking "sierra gold". The divisions of General Motors
often give different names to the same colors.
Names given to the most vivid colors often often include the word neon, alluding to the bright glow of neon lighting
. Dyes and inks producing these colors are often fluorescent
, producing a luminous glow when viewed under a black light
.
Word
In language, a word is the smallest free form that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content . This contrasts with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own...
or phrase
Phrase
In everyday speech, a phrase may refer to any group of words. In linguistics, a phrase is a group of words which form a constituent and so function as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence. A phrase is lower on the grammatical hierarchy than a clause....
that refers to a specific color
Color
Color or colour is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, green, blue and others. Color derives from the spectrum of light interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors...
. The color term may refer to human perception of that color (which is affected by visual context), or to an underlying physical property (such as a specific wavelength of visible light). There are also numerical systems of color specification, referred to as color space
Color space
A color model is an abstract mathematical model describing the way colors can be represented as tuples of numbers, typically as three or four values or color components...
s.
In natural languages
Monolexemic color words are composed of individual lexemeLexeme
A lexeme is an abstract unit of morphological analysis in linguistics, that roughly corresponds to a set of forms taken by a single word. For example, in the English language, run, runs, ran and running are forms of the same lexeme, conventionally written as RUN...
s, such as "red", "brown", or "olive". Compound color words make use of adjectives (e.g. "light brown", "sea green") or multiple basic color words (e.g. "yellow-green").
Color dimensions
There are many different dimensions by which color varies. For example, hueHue
Hue is one of the main properties of a color, defined technically , as "the degree to which a stimulus can be describedas similar to or different from stimuli that are described as red, green, blue, and yellow,"...
(shades of red
Red
Red is any of a number of similar colors evoked by light consisting predominantly of the longest wavelengths of light discernible by the human eye, in the wavelength range of roughly 630–740 nm. Longer wavelengths than this are called infrared , and cannot be seen by the naked eye...
, orange
Orange (colour)
The colour orange occurs between red and yellow in the visible spectrum at a wavelength of about 585–620 nm, and has a hue of 30° in HSV colour space. It is numerically halfway between red and yellow in a gamma-compressed RGB colour space, the expression of which is the RGB colour wheel. The...
, yellow
Yellow
Yellow is the color evoked by light that stimulates both the L and M cone cells of the retina about equally, with no significant stimulation of the S cone cells. Light with a wavelength of 570–590 nm is yellow, as is light with a suitable mixture of red and green...
, green
Green
Green is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 520–570 nanometres. In the subtractive color system, it is not a primary color, but is created out of a mixture of yellow and blue, or yellow and cyan; it is considered...
, blue
Blue
Blue is a colour, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 440–490 nm. It is considered one of the additive primary colours. On the HSV Colour Wheel, the complement of blue is yellow; that is, a colour corresponding to an equal...
, and violet
Violet (color)
As the name of a color, violet is synonymous with a bluish purple, when the word "purple" is used in the common English language sense of any color between blue and red, not including either blue or red...
), saturation
Saturation (color theory)
In colorimetry and color theory, colorfulness, chroma, and saturation are related but distinct concepts referring to the perceived intensity of a specific color. Colorfulness is the degree of difference between a color and gray. Chroma is the colorfulness relative to the brightness of another color...
("deep" vs. "pale"), and brightness
Brightness
Brightness is an attribute of visual perception in which a source appears to be radiating or reflecting light. In other words, brightness is the perception elicited by the luminance of a visual target...
or intensity make up the HSI color space. The adjective "fluorescent" in English refers to moderately high brightness with strong color saturation. Pastel
Pastel
Pastel is an art medium in the form of a stick, consisting of pure powdered pigment and a binder. The pigments used in pastels are the same as those used to produce all colored art media, including oil paints; the binder is of a neutral hue and low saturation....
refers to colors with high brightness and low saturation.
Some phenomena are due to related optical effects, but may or may not be described separately from the color name. These include gloss
Gloss (material appearance)
Gloss is an optical property, which is based on the interaction of light with physical characteristics of a surface. It is actually the ability of a surface to reflect light into the specular direction. The factors that affect gloss are the refractive index of the material, the angle of incident...
(high-gloss shades are sometimes described as "metallic"; this is also a distinguishing feature of gold and silver), iridescence
Iridescence
Iridescence is generally known as the property of certain surfaces which appear to change color as the angle of view or the angle of illumination changes...
or goniochromism (angle-dependent color), dichroism
Dichroism
Dichroism has two related but distinct meanings in optics. A dichroic material is either one which causes visible light to be split up into distinct beams of different wavelengths , or one in which light rays having different polarizations are absorbed by different amounts.The original meaning of...
(two-color surfaces), and opacity
Opacity (optics)
Opacity is the measure of impenetrability to electromagnetic or other kinds of radiation, especially visible light. In radiative transfer, it describes the absorption and scattering of radiation in a medium, such as a plasma, dielectric, shielding material, glass, etc...
(solid vs. translucent).
Cultural differences
Different cultures have different terms for colors, and may also assign some color terms to slightly different parts of the human color space: for instance, the Chinese characterChinese character
Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...
青 ' onMouseout='HidePop("92541")' href="/topics/Standard_Mandarin">Mandarin
Standard Mandarin
Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin or Putonghua, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China , and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....
and ao
Ao (color)
Ao is a Japanese color word that includes what English-speakers would call blue and green. For example, in Japan, green traffic lights are described as , and blue skies are described as , as in aozora bunko....
in Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
) has a meaning that covers both blue and green
Distinguishing blue from green in language
The English language makes a distinction between blue and green, but some languages do not. Of these, quite a number, mostly in Africa, do not distinguish blue from black either, while there are a handful of languages that do not distinguish blue from black but have a separate term for green...
; blue and green are traditionally considered shades of "青." In more contemporary terms, they are 藍 (lán, in Mandarin) and 綠 (lǜ, in Mandarin) respectively. Japanese also has two terms that refer specifically to the color green, 綠 (midori which is derived from the classical Japanese descriptive verb midoru 'to be in leaf, to flourish' in reference to trees) and グリーン (guriin, which is derived from the English word 'green'). However, in Japan, although the traffic lights have the same colors that other countries' have, the green light is described using the same word as for blue, "aoi", because green is considered a shade of aoi; similarly, green variants of certain fruits and vegetables such as green apples, green shiso
Perilla
Perilla is the common name of the herbs of the genus Perilla of the mint family, Lamiaceae. In mild climates, the plant reseeds itself. There are both green-leafed and purple-leafed varieties, which are generally recognized as separate species by botanists. The leaves resemble stinging nettle...
(as opposed to red apples and red shiso) will be described with the word "aoi".
Similarly, languages are selective when deciding which hues are split into different colors on the basis of how light or dark they are. English splits some hues into several distinct colors according to lightness: such as red
Red
Red is any of a number of similar colors evoked by light consisting predominantly of the longest wavelengths of light discernible by the human eye, in the wavelength range of roughly 630–740 nm. Longer wavelengths than this are called infrared , and cannot be seen by the naked eye...
and pink
Pink
Pink is a mixture of red and white. Commonly used for Valentine's Day and Easter, pink is sometimes referred to as "the color of love." The use of the word for the color known today as pink was first recorded in the late 17th century....
or orange
Orange (colour)
The colour orange occurs between red and yellow in the visible spectrum at a wavelength of about 585–620 nm, and has a hue of 30° in HSV colour space. It is numerically halfway between red and yellow in a gamma-compressed RGB colour space, the expression of which is the RGB colour wheel. The...
and brown
Brown
Brown is a color term, denoting a range of composite colors produced by a mixture of orange, red, rose, or yellow with black or gray. The term is from Old English brún, in origin for any dusky or dark shade of color....
. To English speakers, these pairs of colors, which are objectively no more different from one another than light green and dark green, are conceived of as belonging to different categories. A Russian will make the same red-pink and orange-brown distinctions, but will also make a further distinction between sinii and goluboi, which English speakers would simply call dark and light blue. To Russian speakers, sinii and goluboi are as separate as red and pink or orange and brown.
Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
and Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
have two words for "red": piros and vörös- vörös is a darker red (Hungarian), and kırmızı and al (Turkish). Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
also has two words for "white": beyaz and ak. Similarly, Irish
Irish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
uses two words for green
Green
Green is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 520–570 nanometres. In the subtractive color system, it is not a primary color, but is created out of a mixture of yellow and blue, or yellow and cyan; it is considered...
: glas denotes the green color of plants, while uaithne describes artificial greens of dyes, paints etc. This distinction is made even if two shades are identical.
Basic color terms
However, Brent Berlin and Paul Kay, in a classic study (1969) of worldwide color naming, argued that these differences can be organized into a coherent hierarchy, and that there are a limited number of universal "basic color terms" which begin to be used by individual cultures in a relatively fixed order. Berlin and Kay based their analysis on a comparison of color words in 20 languages from around the world. To be considered a basic color term, the words had to be- monolexemic ("green", but not "light green" or "forest green"),
- high-frequency, and
- agreed upon by speakers of that language.
(This last point, however, can be ambiguous, as native speakers may not always agree with each other.) Their analysis showed that, in a culture with only two terms, the two terms would mean roughly 'dark' (covering black
Black
Black is the color of objects that do not emit or reflect light in any part of the visible spectrum; they absorb all such frequencies of light...
, dark colors and cold colors such as blue) and 'bright' (covering white
White
White is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light that stimulates all three types of color sensitive cone cells in the human eye in nearly equal amounts and with high brightness compared to the surroundings. A white visual stimulation will be void of hue and grayness.White light can be...
, light colors and warm colors such as red). All languages with three colors terms would add red
Red
Red is any of a number of similar colors evoked by light consisting predominantly of the longest wavelengths of light discernible by the human eye, in the wavelength range of roughly 630–740 nm. Longer wavelengths than this are called infrared , and cannot be seen by the naked eye...
to this distinction. Thus, the three most basic colors are black, white, and red. Additional color terms are added in a fixed order as a language evolves: first one of green
Green
Green is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 520–570 nanometres. In the subtractive color system, it is not a primary color, but is created out of a mixture of yellow and blue, or yellow and cyan; it is considered...
or yellow
Yellow
Yellow is the color evoked by light that stimulates both the L and M cone cells of the retina about equally, with no significant stimulation of the S cone cells. Light with a wavelength of 570–590 nm is yellow, as is light with a suitable mixture of red and green...
; then the other of green or yellow; then blue
Blue
Blue is a colour, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 440–490 nm. It is considered one of the additive primary colours. On the HSV Colour Wheel, the complement of blue is yellow; that is, a colour corresponding to an equal...
. All languages distinguishing six colors contain terms for black, white, red, green, yellow, and blue. These colors roughly correspond to the sensitivities of the retinal ganglion cells, leading Berlin and Kay to argue that color naming is not merely a cultural phenomenon, but is one that is also constrained by biology—that is, language is shaped by perception.
As languages develop, they next adopt a term for brown
Brown
Brown is a color term, denoting a range of composite colors produced by a mixture of orange, red, rose, or yellow with black or gray. The term is from Old English brún, in origin for any dusky or dark shade of color....
; then terms for orange
Orange (colour)
The colour orange occurs between red and yellow in the visible spectrum at a wavelength of about 585–620 nm, and has a hue of 30° in HSV colour space. It is numerically halfway between red and yellow in a gamma-compressed RGB colour space, the expression of which is the RGB colour wheel. The...
, pink
Pink
Pink is a mixture of red and white. Commonly used for Valentine's Day and Easter, pink is sometimes referred to as "the color of love." The use of the word for the color known today as pink was first recorded in the late 17th century....
, purple
Purple
Purple is a range of hues of color occurring between red and blue, and is classified as a secondary color as the colors are required to create the shade....
and/or gray, in any order. Finally, a basic term for light blue
Azure (color)
The color bleu de France is displayed at right.Bleu de France is a color that has been associated in heraldry with the Kings of France since the 12th century.-Brandeis blue:...
appears.
The proposed evolutionary trajectories as of 1999 are as follows. 80% of sampled languages lie along the central path.
| I | II | III | IV | V |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| light–warm (white/yellow/red) dark–cool (black/blue/green) |
white red/yellow black/blue/green |
white red yellow black/blue/green |
white red yellow green black/blue |
white red yellow green blue black |
| white red/yellow blue/green black |
white red yellow blue/green black |
|||
| white red yellow/green/blue black |
Today every natural language that has words for colors is considered to have from two to twelve basic color terms. All other colors are considered by most speakers of that language to be variants of these basic color terms. English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
contains the eleven basic color terms "black," "white," "red," "green," "yellow," "blue," "brown," "orange," "pink," "purple" and "gray." Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
and Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
have twelve, distinguishing blue
Blue
Blue is a colour, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 440–490 nm. It is considered one of the additive primary colours. On the HSV Colour Wheel, the complement of blue is yellow; that is, a colour corresponding to an equal...
and azure
Azure (color)
The color bleu de France is displayed at right.Bleu de France is a color that has been associated in heraldry with the Kings of France since the 12th century.-Brandeis blue:...
. That doesn't mean English speakers cannot describe the difference of the two colors, of course; however, in English, azure is not a basic color term because one can say bright sky blue instead, while pink is basic because speakers do not say light red.
Abstract and descriptive color words
Color words in a language can also be divided into abstract color words and descriptive color words, though the distinction is blurry in many cases. Abstract color words are words that only refer to a color. In English white, black, red, yellow, green, blue, brown, and gray are abstract color words. These words also happen to be 'basic color terms' in English as described above, but colors like maroonMaroon (color)
Maroon is a dark red color.-Etymology:Maroon is derived from French marron .The first recorded use of maroon as a color name in English was in 1789.-Maroon :...
and magenta
Magenta
Magenta is a color evoked by light stronger in blue and red wavelengths than in yellowish-green wavelengths . In light experiments, magenta can be produced by removing the lime-green wavelengths from white light...
are also abstract though they may not be considered 'basic color terms', either because they are considered by native speakers to be too rare, too specific, or subordinate hues of more basic colors (red in the case of maroon, or purple in the case of magenta).
Descriptive color words are words that are secondarily used to describe a color but primarily used to refer to an object or phenomenon. "Salmon
Salmon (color)
Salmon a range of pale pinkish-orange to light pink colors, named after the color of salmon flesh.The web color salmon is displayed at right.The first recorded use of salmon as a color name in English was in 1776...
", "rose
Rose (color)
Rose is the color halfway between red and magenta on the HSV color wheel, also known as the RGB color wheel, on which it is at hue angle of 330 degrees.Rose is one of the tertiary colors on the HSV color wheel...
", "saffron
Saffron (color)
Saffron is a color that is a tone of golden yellow resembling the color of the tip of the saffron crocus thread, from which the spice saffron is derived.The first recorded use of saffron as a color name in English was in 1200...
", and "lilac
Lilac (color)
Lilac is a color that is a pale tone of violet that is a representation of the average color of most lilac flowers. It might also be described as light purple. The colors of some lilac flowers may be equivalent to the colors shown below as pale lilac, rich lilac, or deep lilac...
" are descriptive color words in English because their use as color words is derived in reference to natural colors of salmon
Salmon
Salmon is the common name for several species of fish in the family Salmonidae. Several other fish in the same family are called trout; the difference is often said to be that salmon migrate and trout are resident, but this distinction does not strictly hold true...
flesh, rose
Rose
A rose is a woody perennial of the genus Rosa, within the family Rosaceae. There are over 100 species. They form a group of erect shrubs, and climbing or trailing plants, with stems that are often armed with sharp prickles. Flowers are large and showy, in colours ranging from white through yellows...
flowers, infusions of saffron
Saffron
Saffron is a spice derived from the flower of Crocus sativus, commonly known as the saffron crocus. Crocus is a genus in the family Iridaceae. Each saffron crocus grows to and bears up to four flowers, each with three vivid crimson stigmas, which are each the distal end of a carpel...
pistils, and lilac blossoms respectively. Often a descriptive color word will be used to specify a particular hue of basic color term (salmon and rose [descriptive] are both hues of pink).
Colors in some languages may be denoted by descriptive color words even though other languages may use an abstract color word for the same color; for example in Japanese pink is "momoiro" (桃色, lit. "peach-color") and gray is either "haiiro" or "nezumiiro" (灰色, 鼠色, lit. "ash-color" for light grays and "mouse-color" for dark grays respectively); nevertheless, as languages change they may adopt or invent new abstract color terms, as Japanese has adopted "pinku (ピンク) for pink and "guree" (グレー) for gray from English.
The status of some color words as abstract or descriptive is debatable. The color "pink
Pink
Pink is a mixture of red and white. Commonly used for Valentine's Day and Easter, pink is sometimes referred to as "the color of love." The use of the word for the color known today as pink was first recorded in the late 17th century....
" was originally a descriptive color word derived from the name of a flower called a "pink" (see dianthus
Dianthus
Dianthus is a genus of about 300 species of flowering plants in the family Caryophyllaceae, native mainly to Europe and Asia, with a few species extending south to north Africa, and one species in arctic North America. Common names include carnation , pink and sweet William Dianthus is a genus of...
); however, because the word "pink" (flower) has become very rare whereas "pink" (color) has become very common, many native speakers of English use "pink" as an abstract color word alone and furthermore consider it to be one of the 'basic color terms' of English. "Purple
Purple
Purple is a range of hues of color occurring between red and blue, and is classified as a secondary color as the colors are required to create the shade....
" is another example of this shift, as it was originally a word that referred to a dye
Dye
A dye is a colored substance that has an affinity to the substrate to which it is being applied. The dye is generally applied in an aqueous solution, and requires a mordant to improve the fastness of the dye on the fiber....
(see Tyrian purple
Tyrian purple
Tyrian purple , also known as royal purple, imperial purple or imperial dye, is a purple-red natural dye, which is extracted from sea snails, and which was possibly first produced by the ancient Phoenicians...
).
The word "orange
Orange (word)
The word orange is both a noun and an adjective in the English language. In both cases, it refers primarily to the orange fruit and the colour orange, but has many other derivative meanings....
" is difficult to categorize as abstract or descriptive because both its uses, as a color word and as a word for an object, are very common and it is difficult to distinguish which of the two is primary. As a basic color term it became established in the early to mid 20th century; before that time artist's palettes called it "yellow-red". In English, the use of the word "orange" for a fruit predates its use as a color term; it is derived from the Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
"narang" or Tamil
Tamil language
Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
"naraththai" via the Portuguese "laranja"; the derived form orangish as a color is attested from the late 19th century. by reference to the fruit. Nevertheless, "orange" (color) is usually given equal status to red, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, pink, gray, white and black (all abstract colors) in membership among the basic color terms of English. Based solely on current usage of the word, it would be impossible to distinguish whether the fruit is called an orange because of its color, or the color is so called after the fruit. (This problem is also illustrated by violet
Violet (color)
As the name of a color, violet is synonymous with a bluish purple, when the word "purple" is used in the common English language sense of any color between blue and red, not including either blue or red...
and indigo
Indigo
Indigo is a color named after the purple dye derived from the plant Indigofera tinctoria and related species. The color is placed on the electromagnetic spectrum between about 420 and 450 nm in wavelength, placing it between blue and violet...
.)
Recently, a researcher at Hewlett-Packard, Nathan Moroney, has been performing an online experiment in unconstrained color naming in English and 21 other languages. He has published some of the results of this work and the experiment is ongoing.
Standardized systems
Some examples of color naming systems are CNS and ISCC–NBSISCC-NBS system
The ISCC–NBS System of Color Designation is a system for naming colors based on a set of 12 basic color terms and a small set of adjective modifiers. It was first established in the 1930s by a joint effort of the Inter-Society Color Council, made up of delegates from various American trade...
lexicon of color terms. The disadvantage of these systems, however, is that they only specify specific color samples, so while it is possible to, by interpolating, convert any color to or from one of these systems, a lookup table is required. In other words, no simple invertible equation can convert between CIE XYZ and one of these systems.
Philatelists
Philately
Philately is the study of stamps and postal history and other related items. Philately involves more than just stamp collecting, which does not necessarily involve the study of stamps. It is possible to be a philatelist without owning any stamps...
traditionally use names to identify postage stamp color
Postage stamp color
The colors of postage stamps are at once obvious, and among the most difficult areas of philately. Different denominations of stamps have been printed in different colors since the very beginning; as with their successors, postal clerks could distinguish the Penny Black and Two pence blue more...
s. While the names are largely standardized within each country, there is no broader agreement, and so for instance the US-published Scott catalog will use different names than the British Stanley Gibbons catalogue.
On modern computer systems a standard set of basic color terms is now used across the web color names
Web colors
Web colors are colors used in designing web pages, and the methods for describing and specifying those colors. Hexadecimal color codes begin with a hash ....
(SVG 1.0/CSS3), HTML color names
HTML color names
In HTML, documents using 4.01 specifications colors can be specified by name. Names are defined in this context to be case-insensitive. Using colors in HTML has been deprecated in favor of CSS....
, X11 color names
X11 color names
In computing, on the X Window System, X11 color names are represented in a simple text file, which maps certain strings to RGB color values. It is shipped with every X11 installation, hence the name, and is usually located in <X11root>/lib/X11/rgb.txt.It is not known who originally compiled...
and the .NET Framework
.NET Framework
The .NET Framework is a software framework that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It includes a large library and supports several programming languages which allows language interoperability...
color names, with only a few minor differences.
The Crayola
Crayola
Crayola is a brand of artists' supplies manufactured by Crayola LLC, which was founded in 1885 as Binney & Smith. It is best known for its crayons...
company is famous for its many crayon colors, often creatively named.
Color names, paint stores, and fashion
Color naming in fashion and paint exploits the subjectiveness and emotional context of words and their associations. This is particularly seen in the naming of paint chips and samples where paint is sold. This may in fact be an aid to moving a customer through the store more rapidly, as closely similar shades may be equally valid in a specific application, with selection being determined by individual preference, colors of furnishings and artwork, and the quality and character of light, both artificial and natural. The attachment of an emotional context to a color sample by choice of name may enhance the rapidity of selection.In fashion and automotive colors the objective of naming is to enhance the perception of color through appropriate naming to fit the emotional context desired. Thus the same "poppy yellow" can become either the hot blooded and active "amber rage", the cozy and peaceful "late afternoon sunshine", or the wealth evoking "sierra gold". The divisions of General Motors
General Motors
General Motors Company , commonly known as GM, formerly incorporated as General Motors Corporation, is an American multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and the world's second-largest automaker in 2010...
often give different names to the same colors.
Names given to the most vivid colors often often include the word neon, alluding to the bright glow of neon lighting
Neon lighting
Neon lighting is created by brightly glowing, electrified glass tubes or bulbs that contain rarefied neon or other gases. Georges Claude, a French engineer and inventor, presented neon tube lighting in essentially its modern form at the Paris Motor Show from December 3–18, 1910...
. Dyes and inks producing these colors are often fluorescent
Fluorescence
Fluorescence is the emission of light by a substance that has absorbed light or other electromagnetic radiation of a different wavelength. It is a form of luminescence. In most cases, emitted light has a longer wavelength, and therefore lower energy, than the absorbed radiation...
, producing a luminous glow when viewed under a black light
Black light
A black light, also referred to as a UV light, ultraviolet light, or Wood's lamp, is a lamp that emits ultraviolet radiation in the long-wave range, and little visible light...
.
External links
- The Colour of Words - Article on Color Names
- Coloria.net: Color names
- Japanese Color Names Cheat Sheet
- Japanese Traditional Color Names
- Japanese colors with English names
- Inter-Society Color Council
- The color names in CSS 3: Color Module and SVG
- Survey of color dictionaries
- An Online Color Naming Experiment
- Color Words in Many Languages
- Test your own color terms