COLOUR WORDS: The astounding origins of "blue", "black", "orange", "red" & other colors

Swart for black still exists in some dialects, with the adjective swarthy being in standard English for dark more associated with skin colour.

When teaching little children in London, a child drew a night scene for me with an orange sky. He insisted that the night sky was orange, and then I noticed that where he lived, the orange street lamps had indeed made the sky look orange, and his observation chastened me and made me listen more closely to the wisdom of infants.

Another thing to consider Rob, bronze is only that dark coppery colour when polished. On exposure to the elements, it forms a very blue coloured patina, as in the case of the Statue of Liberty. When the Greeks were referring to bronze skies, they must have been referring to the blue colour of bronze left out in the open.

Big Thank you dear Rob !! Lovely how all colours have, mostly a common root (mostly..)

I’m surprised that you brushed over pink so quickly. “To Pink” was the practice of cutting a decorative edge into material, to reveal the colours of underlying materials. Pinks, the flower, were named so, because their petals have a decorative “pinked” edge. They also happened to be a shade of light red, hence the colour became known as pink (also not all Pinks are pink, you can get white pinks too). You can still purchase “Pinking shears”, which are scissors, used in tailoring and dressmaking, which cut a decorative zig-zag edge on cloth, which is supposed to stop it from fraying.

Your puns and subtle jokes that weave their way through your narrative are an absolute delight to listen to. I would love more videos on color origins. This was absolutely fascinating.

Several things happen when I watch your video's Rob. Firstly, they are incredibly informative and entertaining. Secondly, they really bring a smile to my face - I love the way you present them, just the right balance of humour and seriousness. Thirdly, the story of our language, or indeed perhaps all language, how it formed, evolved and changed, has become fascinating to me. Fourthly, and most surprisingly, the questions that arise as I think about words, their origin and how they inform us. The whole topic about 'seeing' pink and red as separate, the sea not being named as a clour but rather in terms of its brightness, etc... The implications for how these ideas influence what we experience, the way we interpret our sensory data and, perhaps, how and what we we actually think about. There is so much here. My only previous venture into something similar occured when teaching a small class about philosophy. We looked at a copy of the Meditations by Descartes. One thing that immediately stood out were the enourmously long sentences that he used. Of course this was down to the lack of any standardised punctuation but it made the students appreciate why such notation exists. Although the story of the introduction of punctuation would make a great video - or perhaps you've already done so, I'll check. I thank you so much for bringing something new and so interesting to my life. (I'm in my 70s and have grown tired of all the repetition I come across.)

Man... I've always loved learning languages and learning ABOUT them, but watching your videos on etymology makes me even happier. You explain in such a fun way! P.S.: Gotta love the puns too!

I'm surprised that you didn't mention the two words Latin had for "blue" - the first being caeruleus, from caelum meaning 'sky' (which was also eventually synonymous with azure, which comes from lapis lazuli), which gave us the words 'celeste' and 'celestial', and the second being lividus, which often referred to the blueish grey colour of a corpse. It was used to describe the colour of bruises as well, which may be where the phrase "black and blue" referring to being bruised comes from. In fact, in medicine today, something being "livid" means that is a bluish colour - e.g. livid haematomas are large bruises with a bluish appearance. Try as I might, I can't figure out where the Latin 'liveo' came from, it seems to be from a very old proto-indo-european root that may have also given us the word 'sloe', which is of course a berry with a greyish-bluish exterior. It's possible that 'liveo' also gave rise to the word 'lavendar' or 'lavendula'. So, in Latin, if something was blue it was either the colour of the sky, or the colour of dead people/bruising, and I find that quite fascinating. 'Cyan' and 'indigo' also have very interesting etymologies, but I don't want to write half a book in the comments so I'll let you google that on your own.

In Welsh, glas means blue, except when its used to describe vegetation, in which case it can mean green. Was an interesting parallel with the English etymology.

Russian also has the distinction between deep blue ('cinni') and sky blue ('goluboi'), a fact I became acutely aware of as a foreigner teaching English to some Russian primary schoolers. At an age where your favorite color is still one of your defining key personality traits, you're not going to stand for some grownup telling you your favorite color is blue, when it's CLEARLY goluboi!

I was surprised when you got to pink that you didn’t mention why the flower was named pink in the first place. The edges of the petals are jagged — this old meaning of pink can still be found today in “pinking shears” which cut fabric in a zigzag.

In Maori and other Pasifika languages, the colours come from nature. Kowhai is yellow and is named after a yellow flower, kakariki is green and is named after a parrot of the same colour. I love their naming devices

Re: brown - I highly suggest Technology Connections' video "Brown; Color is Weird" where he goes into some (not excruciating) detail about how color names are derived and how it relates to how we perceive colors culturally. And also how brown is really just dark orange. But like magenta and pink (and Italians' blue vs. azure), we've decided it's distinct enough to be considered different. But on that subject, it's interesting how of course azure looks distinct among blues, but we still call it a version of blue unlike Italians. Likewise, I might be the only English speaker who considers magenta a version of slightly-purpled pink.

Great channel, I love it! I am a language geek and stuff like this always interests me. As an addition to the part about "white": I read somewhere that the Latin word for white was "album". However, the Romance languages took their words for white (blanc, blanco, bianco) from the Germanic "blank". So here, instead of taking the Latin word, they adopted the Germanic word, which didn't happen that often. Today, German "blank" can be used for shiny, broke, and naked, by the way.

It's interesting that in Turkish we do the opposite: if you translate "blue" it would be "mavi", but unlike Italian our blue is the lighter one, for dark blue we have an additional word "lacivert" which ultimately comes from the same root as "lazuli" in "lapis lazuli", as well as "azul", "azure" and "azzurro". So even though we have an additional word for a different type of blue with the same root as "azzurro" in Italian, we use it for darker blue, not lighter

I actually wondered if the French interpretation (blanc) of burned refers to the "whiteness" of ashes that often lay on top of the dark burned remains. Your videos give so much to think ... excellent material.

This video made me realize that English "white" and Sanskrit "śveta" meaning "white" are cognate. There are many blue wildflowers. My favourite colour is indigo. The word "nerantza" is found in Modern Greek but is used to refer only to the bitter orange, which we use for making marmelade.

We missed a very interesting fact: From my one linguistics class in college a decade ago, as you know some modern indigenous languages lack color words, only words for light and dark - if a language has only one word for color, its red. The thought is because its the color of blood. Also, studies show that there are slight differences in how different cultures define colors at the margins, which he did touch on with the Italian azure and blue distinction. Lastly, pink is a different color. ...imagine greenish red, not brown but greenish red. Or yellowish blue, not green but yellowish blue. You cant see these colors because the receptors in your eyes are NOT designed to see them but they exist, someone with different color receptors in their eyes could see them. These are forbidden colors...but there is one "forbidden" color mix that isnt forbidden based on our light receptors, the mix of blue and red wavelengths from opposite ends of the light spectrum. Our brains interpret it as pink. Hence, pink isnt just light red.

I’ve heard that the Ancient Greeks would describe the sky as bronze before (I think on Q.I). I imagined it was not because bronze is shiny, but rather because, as bronze corrodes, it turns blue (or cyan) with verdigris, a similar colour to the sky.