A color term (or 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) which is usually defined according to the Munsell color system, 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 spaces.
An important distinction must be established between color and shape, as these two attributes usually are used in conjunction with one another when describing in language. For example, they are labeled as alternative parts of speech terms color term and shape term.[1]
Psychological conditions for recognition of colors exist, such as those who cannot discern colors in general or those who see colors as sound (a variety of synesthesia).
Typical human color vision is trichromatic, meaning it is based on a three-dimensional color gamut. These three dimensions can be defined in different ways, but often the most intuitive definition are the dimensions of the HSL/HSV color space:
Monolexemic color words are composed of individual lexemes, or root words, such as 'red', 'brown', 'fuchsia', or 'olive'. The root words generally describe the hue of the color, but some root wordsnamely browncan also describe the other dimensions. Compound color words make use of prefix adjectives (e.g. 'light brown', 'sea green'), that generally describe the saturation or luminosity, or compounded basic color words (e.g. 'yellow-green'), which refine the hue of the color relative to root words. 'Vaaleanpunainen', the Finnish word for 'pink' is a clear agglutination of the language's words for 'pale' ('vaalea') and 'red' ('punainen').
Basic color terms meet the following criteria:
English has 11 basic color terms: black, white, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, orange, pink, purple, and gray; other languages have between 2 and 12. All other colors are considered by most speakers of that language to be variants of these basic color terms. A useful litmus test involves replacing each of these basic terms with an approximation of other basic terms, e.g. replacing orange with red-yellow. If the approximation is jarring, the replaced term likely meets the requirement for being a basic color term.An example of a color that comes close to being a basic color term in English is turquoise. It is monolexemic, but is not very high frequency, especially compared to alternatives teal or cyan. It also generally fails the above litmus test in that most people do not find the use of the approximation of other basic color terms (blue-green) to be jarring.
In the classic study of Brent Berlin and Paul Kay (1969), Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution, the researchers argued that the differences in number of basic color terms in languages follow a repeatable pattern. Color terms can be organized into a coherent hierarchy and there are a limited number of universal basic color terms which begin to be used by individual cultures in a relatively fixed order. This order is defined in stages I to VII. Berlin and Kay originally based their analysis on a comparison of color words in 20 languages from around the world. The model is presented below, broken into stages, with stage I on the left and stage VII on the right:[2]
\begin{Bmatrix}white\ black\end{Bmatrix}<red<\begin{Bmatrix}green\ yellow\end{Bmatrix}<blue<brown<\begin{Bmatrix}purple\ pink\ orange\ grey\end{Bmatrix}
Berlin and Kay's study identified seven stages of color distinction systems. Each progressive stage features a color term that the previous stages do not.
| Stage I[3] | light–warm (white/yellow/red) dark–cool (black/blue/green) |
|---|
In the Bassa language, there are two terms for classifying colors; ziza (white, yellow, orange, and red) and hui (black, violet, blue, and green).[4]
In the Pirahã language, there appear to be no color terms beyond describing lightness and darkness.[5]
The Dani language of western New Guinea differentiates only two basic colors: mili for cool/dark shades such as blue, green, and black; and mola for warm/light colors such as red, yellow, and white.[6] [7]
| Stage II | white red/yellow black/blue/green |
|---|
In the Bambara language, there are three color terms: dyema (white, beige), blema (reddish, brownish), and fima (dark green, indigo, and black).
| Stage III | white red yellow black/blue/green | white red yellow/green/blue black | white red/yellow green/blue black |
|---|
The Ovahimba use four color names: zuzu stands for dark shades of blue, red, green, and purple; vapa is white and some shades of yellow; buru is some shades of green and blue; and dambu is some other shades of green, red, and brown.[9] It is thought that this may increase the time it takes for the Ovahimba to distinguish between two colors that fall under the same Herero color category, compared to people whose language separates the colors into two different color categories.[10]
| Stage IV | white red yellow green black/blue | white red yellow green/blue black |
|---|
The Chinese character 青 (pronounced qīng in Mandarin and Japanese: ao in Japanese) has a meaning that covers both blue and green. 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, Japanese: [[wikt:緑|緑]] (Japanese: midori, derived from the classical Japanese descriptive verb Japanese: midoru in reference to trees) and Japanese: グリーン (Japanese: guriin, which is derived from the English word 'green').
| Stage V | white red yellow green blue black |
|---|
The seventh basic color term is likely to be brown.
In English, this is the first basic color term (other than black and white) that is not differentiated on hue, but rather on lightness. 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.[11]
Stage VII adds additional terms for orange, pink, purple, or gray, but these do not exhibit the same hierarchy as the previous seven colors.[12]
English contains eleven basic color terms: 'black', 'white', 'red', 'green', 'yellow', 'blue', 'brown', 'orange', 'pink', 'purple', and 'gray'.
Languages with further color distinction use relativistic light/dark terms like light blue/ dark blue (in comparison to blue sky/ blue ocean), or pale red/ deep red.
Italian, Russian and Hebrew have twelve basic color terms, each distinguishing blue and light blue. A Russian will make the same red/pink and orange/brown distinctions, but will also make a further distinction between Russian: sinii and Russian: goluboi, which English speakers would call dark and light blue. To Russian speakers, Russian: sinii and Russian: goluboi are as separate as red and pink, or orange and brown.[13]
Hungarian and Turkish distinguish multiple words for 'red': Hungarian: piros and Hungarian: vörös (Hungarian; Hungarian: vörös is a darker red), and Turkish: kırmızı, Turkish: al, and Turkish: kızıl (Turkish); kırmızı now includes all reds but originally referred to crimson, to which it is cognate, while kızıl mainly refers to scarlet and other orange-tinted or brownish reds. Two words for 'red' are also found in Irish and Scottish Gaelic: (Irish: dearg for light, bright red and Irish: rua or Irish: ruadh respectively for dark, brownish red). Turkish also has two words for 'white' (Turkish: beyaz and Turkish: ak) and 'black' (Turkish: siyah and Turkish: kara). Turkish: Ak and Turkish: beyaz have the same meaning, while Turkish: kara is a broader term than Turkish: siyah and also includes dark browns; which word is used also depends on the kind of object being described. Both Turkish: ak and Turkish: kara are of Turkic origin, while Turkish: siyah is borrowed from Persian, and Turkish: beyaz from Arabic بياض bayāḍ.
In Serbian/Croatian language there are differences in dark brown (mrk), brown (smeđ and kestenjast), red (crven), pink (ružičast), and orange (narandžast), as well as in blue hues: navy blue (teget), dark blue (modar), blue (plav), and ash blue ().
An interesting case that deviates from this pattern is Irish's two words for green:
This distinction is made even if two shades are identical. Glas is also used for "natural" grays, such as the gray squirrel, iora glas.[14] [15]
See main article: Linguistic relativity and the color naming debate. 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.[11] A 2012 study[16] suggested that the origin of this hierarchy may be tied to human vision and the time ordering in which these color names get accepted or agreed upon in a population perfectly matches the order predicted by the hierarchy.
This article mostly describes the color terms that define the hue of a color, since hue is considered the most innate dimension of the three. However, other terms are often used to describe the other two dimensions, which can be seen as common prefixes to the root terms that generally describe hue. Adding prefixes to root color terms generates multilexemic colors. Examples of common prefix adjectives can be seen in a list of color names and are described:
Other terms sometimes used to describe color are related to physical phenomenon that do not describe a single color, but describe the dynamic nature of an object's color. These include:
Color terms can be classified as abstract or descriptive, though the distinction is often unclear.
Abstract color terms refer only to the color they represent and any etymological link to an object of that color is lost. In English white, black, red, yellow, green, blue, brown, and gray are abstract color terms. These terms are also basic color terms (as described above), though other abstract terms like maroon and magenta are not considered basic color terms.
Descriptive color terms are secondarily used to describe a color but primarily refer to an object or phenomenon. 'Salmon', 'rose', 'saffron', and 'lilac' are descriptive color terms in English because their use as color terms is derived in reference to natural colors of salmon flesh, rose flowers, infusions of saffron pistils, and lilac blossoms respectively.
Abstract color terms in one may be represented by descriptive color terms in another; for example in Japanese pink is Japanese: momoiro (Japanese: 桃色,) and gray is either Japanese: haiiro or Japanese: nezumiiro (Japanese: 灰色, Japanese: 鼠色, lit. 'ash-color' for light grays and 'mouse-color' for dark grays respectively). Nevertheless, as languages evolve they may adopt or invent new abstract color terms, as Japanese has adopted Japanese: pinku (Japanese: ピンク) for pink and Japanese: gurē (Japanese: グレー) for gray from English.
While most of the 11 basic color terms in English are decidedly abstract, three of them (all stage VII, so understandably the youngest basic color terms) are arguably still descriptive:
Research on color terms is often conducted without reference to common uses of the term or its significance within the context of its original language. In John A. Lucy's article The linguistics of 'colour he identifies two key categories. One of these is "characteristic referential range", or the use of a color term to identify or differentiate a referent over a wide context.
In contrast with the color terms of natural language, systematized color terms also exist. Some examples of color-naming systems are CNS and ISCC–NBS lexicon of color terms. The disadvantage of these systems, however, is that they specify only 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 colors. While the names are largely standardized within each country, there is no broader agreement, and so for instance the US-published Scott catalogue 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.
Heraldry has standardized names for 'tinctures', subdivided into 'colors', 'metals', and 'furs'.
