Do you know the origin of color names?
Have you ever imagined yourself living in a world without colors? Precisely because they are present in all elements of our daily lives, colors have gained importance over time. But there has not always been such a wide range of shades as we know today. Or at least they had not yet been baptized.
It's hard to imagine, but long, long ago, languages didn't even have names for all colors, some of which ended up being represented by the same word. Time passed and societies were forced to create names for so many different nuances.
Interestingly, when observing isolated cultures, experts noted that, in general, colors were named in the same order. They called this phenomenon the “color name hierarchy, ” the most common order being black, white, red, green, yellow, and blue. Other nuances, such as purple, brown and pink, for example, were baptized long after.
A little of history
Prior to the plurality of languages we have in the world today, the language landscape was quite different. Linguists support the idea that most European languages and some Asian languages had a common ancestor, named after the Proto-European (PIE), and is estimated to have been spoken around 5, 000 years ago. Ç.
From it, many other languages originated, including the Romance languages, of which Portuguese is part alongside French, Spanish, Italian and Romanian. English, which is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, comes from the Germanic language family, from which German and Dutch also emerged.
Romance languages, also known as Latin languages, originated from the evolution of Latin, especially vulgar Latin, which was spoken by the most popular classes. This explains the fact that the origin of many Portuguese words is in Latin, but we must also take into account the influence of other languages such as Arabic, German, French, English, Italian and some African languages, for example.
Below you can check the history of color names, according to Mário Eduardo Viaro, professor of Portuguese Language at the University of São Paulo, in an article published on MundoCor website and some definitions of color names in English according to Gizmodo staff.
(Note that there is no direct evidence of PIE because there are no written records. Therefore, the words we know are reconstitutions made from other languages and so they are flagged with an asterisk.)
black
In Latin, the word for black had a notion of something dense, thick and therefore tight. From there it becomes easier to understand the origin of the name, which is in the Latin appectoráre, which meant "compress against the chest". Over time, the word turned into apreto and then gained the current form.
The word black, which also designates the color dark, has its origin in Latin nigrum, and in other Latin languages it has acquired very similar forms: black (Spanish), nero (Italian), noir (French) and negru (Romanian).
Already in English, the word black refers to darkness, just as it means to "burn". Its origin is in * blakkaz (from Proto-Germanic), which evolved into blaec (in Old English) and reached the form we know today.
White
In Latin, the opposite of the denser color was albus and that is precisely why we have scholarly words as target and albino, which refer to white. Already the word white itself has Germanic origin and originally meant something shiny, shiny or polished. This allows us to better understand the meaning of the term "melee weapons".
It is interesting to note that the original Latin form only remained in Romanian ( alb ), and the other Latin languages also took advantage of the Germanic version and formed blanco (Spanish), blanc (French) and bianco (Italian).
In English, the word representing the color white in PIE is believed to be * kwintos . It later became * khwitz (Proto-German), hvitr (Old Norse), hwit (Old Saxon), and wit (Dutch). A few more changes and the word turned white which is the way we use it today.
Red
Have you heard that red pigment is taken from an insect called cochineal? For it is precisely in this animal that is the origin of the name and color that we know today. Coccum is the Latin name for this insect that produces pigments in shades of red. For this reason, in Latin, the color scarlet got the name of coccinus, which came to modern Greek as kókkinos . In Portuguese, we lose the original name of the animal, but we get the idea of a “little worm”, which is where vermiculum came from, the word that gave rise to our color.
In Proto-German, the word used to designate red objects was * rauthaz, which was derived from raudr (Old Norse), rod (Old Saxon), and rØd (Dutch), reaching the red of modern English.
Green
Interestingly, even from different families, the origin of the name of the color green in English and Portuguese has a very similar explanation. In both cases, the word that gave rise to the name color meant growing, verdant. In Latin, the verb is viridem, which is where our green came from - just as it was adopted in Spanish, Romanian and Italian - which became vert for the French.
Already in PIE, the verb grow was * ghre, which became graenn (Old Norse) and grown (Dutch). In Old Saxon, the word grene indicated both color and young and immature things, and that's where the green we know today came from.
Yellow
The etymology of yellow is a little more uncertain, but it is believed to be a derivation of the word amarus, which was the diminutive of bitter in Latin. The relationship between taste and color may seem strange, but it is a reference to the bitter taste of bile.
The dubious color of the substance also draws our attention to the fact that for a long time the color spectrum divisions were not very accurate, which eventually resulted in the same name for what we would now understand as two colors.
This becomes even clearer if we think that in the PIE the word * ghel was used for both green and yellow. She arrived in Old Norse in the form of gulr and earned the spellings geolu and geolwe in Old English. Over time, the word has turned to yellow in modern English.
Blue
Although Latin has a form that even reached Portuguese, the word cerulean (from Latin caeruleus ) is very little used. The truth is that our famous blue comes from Arabic, which in turn came from the Persian term for a gemstone called lapis lazuli. This form has also come to Spanish ( blue ) and Italian ( azurro ).
On the other hand, French did not follow the order of the other Latin languages and went to fetch his bleu in the Germanic languages, where the word * bhle-was (PIE) meant to shine. Then came Proto-Germanic (* blaewaz ) and Old English ( blaw ). Interestingly, modern English blue is one of the French words that make up the language.
Other colours
When we talk about color, it is always important to remember that many of them were named after plants, animals, and other beings. Pink, gray and violet are some very obvious examples of this process.
An example of this is the word orange in Portuguese and orange in English. This color got its name precisely because of the fruit that in Sanskrit was naranga . In Arabic and Persian, the fruit was named naranj and turned into pomme d'orenge in ancient French.
Brown is another color that has its origin in an element of nature. In French, brown means chestnut and hence the name of the legitimate "brown frosting", which is made with chestnuts. On the other hand, the name of the fruit remained in some expressions, such as "brown eyes and hair".
* Originally posted on 01/31/2014.
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