Color name
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
The neutrality or factuality of this article or section may be compromised by weasel words. You can help Wikipedia by improving weasel-worded statements. |
A color name is a linguistic label that humans attach to a specific color. Color is determined by a physical color and/or other physical features, such as reflection or iridescence.
Contents |
[edit] How colors are named
Some colors with one-color names can be synthesized from determined basic colors (e.g. RGB) with more than one manner (methameria), and some color names are not spectral ones (purple, brown).
Naming of colors is dependent on a specific language. There can be a vast and complex system representing determination of a color in a given language. Generally, naming of colors involves a vocabulary and a grammatical syntax.
As the color space is continuous, naming of colors involves quantization, often by a vocabulary that specifies gradual change of one color into another. For example, let us discuss the so-called HSI color space, where each color has attached its numerical values of hue, saturation and intensity, which is enough to determine any color as defined in physics, perceived by a human. Each of the values can gradually change.
Thus, gradual change of 'hue' can be described by names such as red, orange red, orange, yellowish orange, yellow, green yellow, green, sea green, cyan, blue, violet and purple. Gradual change of saturation may for example be expressed by adding to a color name labels like grey, 'greyish', moderate, strong and vivid. Gradual change of intensity may be expressed by adding labels such as 'blackish', very dark, dark, medium, light (or pale) and very light.
Because such a way of naming colors can lead to relatively long names, shortcuts like 'pastel' for a color that is both light and moderately saturated, or descriptive names like 'olive' for relatively dark, yellowish green, are used. Naming of colors goes outside determining just a physical color. For example, 'silver' describes a glistening surface that does not modify proportions in spectrum of the reflected light or in other words does not modify hue of the light, while 'golden' describes a glistening surface that reflects mainly yellow light.
Special kinds of reflection give names to terms like "sparkling", "metallic" (i.e. metallic green), "aluminum". Various forms of scattering, dispersion and diffraction of light by a surface by addition of ground fish scales may add to a color name terms like opalescent or iridescent. The most exotic automotive paints present different colors depending upon the angles of the illumination and the viewpoint, relative to the surface.
A system of naming colors can be hierarchical. For example, a coarse categorization of saturated colors may divide the colors into red, yellow, green, blue and violet. Yet, within such a category, finer categories can be determined, i. e. within green, sea green and olive can be identified. A finer category may belong to two categories at once; orange is a set of colors between red and yellow which can be quantized into red and yellow.
[edit] Regularity
A 1969 study [1] by Berlin and Kay has shown that there are substantial regularities in naming colors across many different languages. In the study, they identified the following basic color terms: black, grey, white, pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and brown. Today every natural language that has words for colors is considered to have from two to twelve basic color terms. All other colors are considered by most speakers of that language to be variants of these basic color terms. English has the eleven basic color terms listed above. Russian and Italian have twelve, distinguishing blue and azure. That doesn't mean English speakers cannot describe the difference of the two colors, of course; however, in English, azure is not a basic color term because one can say light blue instead, while pink is basic because speakers do not say light red.
While the range in the number of basic color terms between languages may seem to highlight a striking difference, there is almost without exception a pattern to how these color terms are included among the basic color terms. As might be expected, languages with two basic color terms name black/dark and white/light. Red is almost always next, followed by either green or blue. After this, the patterns are more complex, and Berlin and Kay's original results have had to be extended on more than one occasion to accommodate new data. However, many linguists still agree that these patterns exist. See also the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
Recently, a researcher at Hewlett-Packard, Nathan Moroney, has been performing an online experiment in unconstrained color naming in English and 21 other languages. [2] [3] He has published[4] some of the results of this work and the experiment is ongoing. Among other things, he demonstrated that fuchsia is the most consistently misspelled non-basic color name in the English language.
[edit] Standardized systems
A computational system of naming colors can be quite complex, because humans perceive a color and name it in a complex way. For example, in the discussed HSI color space, decreasing the intensity of yellow may change the color into dark green, instead of dark yellow. As another example, a given color can be pink for one subject and purple for another subject. One of the ways of reducing such inconsistencies may be asking a number of subjects about naming a set of colors and then deriving, on basis of their answers and of a linguistic study on human color categorization, a computational model that determines a color name, possibly at a required detail level, by the position of the color in a color space.
Some examples of color naming systems are Munsell color system and ISCC- NBS lexicon of color names. The disadvantage of these systems, however, is the lack of an exact computational model of attaching a name to a given color sample. There are also several color naming systems that have such a computational model, yet they oversimplify the interpretation of the HSI or HSV color spaces.
Philatelists traditionally use names to identify postage stamp colors. While the names are largely standardized within each country, there is no broader agreement, and so for instance the US-published Scott catalog will use different names than the British Stanley Gibbons catalogue.
On modern computer systems a standard set of basic color names is now used across the web color names (SVG 1.0/CSS3), X11 color names and the .NET Framework color names, with only a few minor differences.
See also: Crayola
[edit] Color names, paint stores and fashion
Color naming in fashion and paint exploits the subjectiveness and emotional context of words and their associations. This is particularly seen in the naming of paint chips and samples where paint is sold. This may in fact be an aid to moving a customer through the store more rapidly, as closely similar shades may be equally valid in a specific application, with selection being determined by individual preference, colors of furnishings and artwork, and the quality and character of light, both artificial and natural. The attachment of an emotional context to a color sample by choice of name may enhance the rapidity of selection.
In fashion and automotive colors the objective of naming is to enhance the perception of color through appropriate naming to fit the emotional context desired. Thus the same "poppy yellow" can become either the hot blooded and active "amber rage", the cozy and peaceful "late afternoon sunshine", or the wealth evoking "sierra gold".
[edit] HTML color names
Direct color names are color names that can be used directly in HTML, instead of hex triplets.
I.e. Olive instead of the triplet #808000
- Further information: HTML color names
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Berlin B & Kay P Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution University of California Press (1991)
- ^ http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Nathan_Moroney/color-name-hpl.html
- ^ http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Nathan_Moroney/mlcn.html
- ^ Moroney, Nathan, "Unconstrained web-based color naming experiment", SPIE/IS&T Electronic Imaging'03 (2003).
[edit] External links
- The Colour of Words - Article on Color Names
- Coloria.net: Color names
- Color-Guide.com Japanese colors with English names
- Inter-Society Color Council
- The color names in CSS 3: Color Module and SVG
