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

Prepare to be amazed by the surprising origins of the English words for colours (or colors for our American friends). I promise you'll have at least one "wow" moment as I reveal:
🔵 Why the Ancient Greeks had no word for BLUE.
🔶 How the fruit "ORANGE" came before the colour.
◼️ Why BLACK used to mean WHITE.
🔴 Which colour we named first (I've given you a hint)
💿 Why there are two ways to spell GREY/GRAY
🌈 And much, much more.

Find out the etymologies of black, white, gray, blue, brown, green, orange, purples, pink, red and yellow - from their origins thousands of years ago, through Old English and into the present day.

Let's enjoy some colourful language!
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==CHAPTERS==
0:00 Introduction
0:41 Colour & Color
1:26 Origin of BLACK
4:18 Origin of WHITE
5:10 Two spellings of GRAY/GREY
6:30 No word for BLUE
8:55 Italians and AZZURRO
10:01 Origin of BROWN
10:50 Origin of GREEN
11:35 ORANGE or norange?
13:07 Origin of PINK
13:27 Origin of PURPLE
14:18 Origin of RED
15:16 Origin of YELLOW
16:30 Goodbye

[bigaspidistra]

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

[Lily-Bravo]

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.

[colinahearne]

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.

[fidelkva]

This topic is oddly fascinating, and the quality of your videos is top notch.

[nthgth]

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.

[Banzybanz]

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.

[wayner]

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.

[frankboulton]

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.

[SolveEtCoagula]

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.)

[biosparkles]

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.

[Richard_Nickerson]

My son learned the word "cyan" and now corrects everyone when they use the phrase "light blue"

[ReeniBoBeeni]

I’m learning German right now and decided to look into the etymology of Gelb and Geld, yellow and money respectively, and gold has the same etymological root as yellow, which I find fascinating! Seeing gelwaz as the common root word makes a lot of sense!

[TPishek]

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.

[Chickasawndngirl]

That was pretty interesting. In my language we originally had one word for blue or green. We actually had to adopt a word from another language in the last few years, just to make the distinction between blue and green for the new generation of language learners. The language I speak is Chikashshanompa’. It’s the language of the Native American Chickasaw tribe in Oklahoma USA. Also interestingly, our word for blue/green also is used to describe raw fruit and the grey wolf.

[troys]

I do recall being asked as a child to name the color of the sky. I said it had no color. I was told it was blue. But to me, blue was a distant background color to air that was clear that day and not filled with smoke, fog, rain, snow, or clouds.

[Inkjourney]

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

[Taipan]

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.

[Nimue]

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!

[trufflehunter]

Thank you, Rob. Another great video. If Tolkien were still alive, whom C.S. Lewis described as someone who has "been inside language", he would be one of your subscribers. Love your work, sir.

[Pugopugo]

In Sweden people nowadays mostly say orange, roughly pronounciated "oransj". But when I was a kid some 40 years ago, an older word "brandgul" was used, literally meaning fire-yellow. The older generations back then primarily used that word.

About pink we nowadays say "rosa", which is common in other languages. But back in the days the old generation would commonly say "skär", from the French "chair", meaning meat. In the late 1900:s we got cerise as well, but I get the impression that it might be fading away here.