Evolution of colors and their names creatively explored

Over the holidays, a friend of mine was gifted two new baking pans — one red and one blue. “I’ll make a dessert in the blue one, maybe brownies,” he contemplated aloud. “And the red one is clearly meant for savory dishes, so I’ll make a lasagna with that one.” I stood by, listening, both amused and charmed by his matterof-fact assertions. Indeed, the marketing departments of fast food companies have applied these same rules of color psychology to whet the appetites of their customers for decades, with many chains opting for “savory” warm hues like red and yellow in their branding. The influence of colors can be as subliminal yet pervasive as the allure of the names we ascribe to them — think “mocha” vs “brown,” or “chartreuse” as opposed to something like, say, “bile.”

Dark, light, red

In 1969, researchers Brent Berlin and Paul Kay established a hierarchy to describe the various stages of basic color-naming as observed in different languages throughout the world. In the model, the first distinction made by each culture is that of dark and light. The next term to materialize was invariably for the color red. From here, basic

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color terminology continued to expand in a sequence that Berlin and Kay found was more or less universal across cultures: yellow/green, blue, brown and then purple/pink/ orange/gray.

Just as the evolution of linguistic distinctions for colors is thought to be informed by the abundance of each in the natural environment, the words for colors as we use them today are often borrowed directly from elements observed in nature. Muses for color nomenclature come in the form of flowers (such as lilac and violet); fruits (like orange — the name of the citrus preceded that of the color, which was designated “yellow-red” until as recently as the 20th century); and animals (for instance, the spiny dye-murex sea snail — called pupura by the ancient Romans — whose mucus produces a rich pigment in the hue we now call “purple”). A more humdrum matter provides the inspiration for the color name “khaki” — describing a light yellow-tan used to outfit militaries around the world, the term originally derives from the Urdu word for “dust.”

Turkish, “turquoise’ People and places have lent their titles to some of

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All ages the color wheel’s more distinctive shades. The name “turquoise” — dubbed in the 17th century from the French turquois, or “Turkish” — is a misnomer based on the fallacy that the bluegreen gemstone for which it was named was brought to Europe through the Ottoman Empire. (It actually came from Iran.) Similarly, the color indigo derives its naming from the Greek indikon, meaning “blue dye from

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India.” Celadon — both the pottery which originated in China in the 10th century and the misty gray-green color that typifies it — receives its English name from Honoré d’Urfé’s 1627 French pastoral romance, “L’Astrée.” The book’s eponymous heroine falls in love with the shepherd Céladon, who dons a coat and ribbons of a pale green hue. Most prominent The acronym used to describe the most prominent colors visible to the human eye — ROYGBIV* — has also had its fair share of creative renderings. In addition to the illustrious Mr. Roy G. Biv himself, the sentence “Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain” is a commonly used mnemonic said to refer to the defeat of

Richard, Duke of York at the Battle of Wakefield in 1460. Perhaps more prevalent in religious circles is “Read Out Your Good Book In Verse.” In 2020, the Irish campaign Remember The Rainbow proposed replacing these traditional — and somewhat arbitrary — mnemonics with a phrase that would foster a more inclusive climate for students: “Respect Others. You Grow By Including Variety.”

Though I didn’t glimpse any rainbows myself during the torrential rains of January, the weather did inspire a hopeful phrase for the coming spring season: “Rejoice Of Your Garden; Buckets Induce Verdure.”

* Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.