The names of colours is an interesting topic and has changed over time. The colour pink gets its name from the flower, not the other way around. The flowers gets its name from the jagged "pinked" edge to the petal - you know, like pinking shears. Similarly there used to be no colour "orange" until the fruit became common in Britain, before that the shade we get from mixing red and yellow was considered just a shade of red - hence things which are clearly orange have names like "red fox" and "robin redbreast". In the Irish language there was no equivalent of "brown" which accounts for dogs being described as "yellow" in translations of some old songs.
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The names of colours is an interesting topic and has changed over time. The colour pink gets its name from the flower, not the other way around. The flowers gets its name from the jagged "pinked" edge to the petal - you know, like pinking shears. Similarly there used to be no colour "orange" until the fruit became common in Britain, before that the shade we get from mixing red and yellow was considered just a shade of red - hence things which are clearly orange have names like "red fox" and "robin redbreast". In the Irish language there was no equivalent of "brown" which accounts for dogs being described as "yellow" in translations of some old songs.
ReplyDeleteGood point! One does wonder..which is a good thing to do
ReplyDeleteThere is also cyan on the colour wheel, but you're right, in every day parlance, it's all blu.
ReplyDelete