Colors have been an integral part of human life since the earliest civilizations. The origins of the first color names can be traced back thousands of years to a time when written language was just emerging. But what exactly is the oldest known color term? When did our ancestors first begin labeling colors with specific words? Understanding the origins and evolution of color names provides insight into how different cultures have perceived and categorized the world around them throughout history.
The significance of color names
Color terms are more than handy descriptors – they reflect fundamental aspects of human cognition and communication. The ability to distinguish and identify colors by name represents a basic linguistic capacity that aids interactions and helps people make sense of their surroundings. Research has shown that cultures with more names for colors tend to be more economically developed. This suggests that color vocabularies evolved in parallel with technological advancement and greater needs for accurate color communication. Scientifically classifying colors has also long been crucial for fields like biology, physics and astronomy.
Additionally, the specific colors that cultures codify into names can reveal their values, preoccupations and physical environments. For instance, many ancient languages had no term for blue but multiple words for types of white. This highlights the cultural significance of broader color categories like warm/cool, light/dark, pure/impure. Exploring the history of color language illustrates how humans categorized visual experiences in different eras.
Tracing the origins of color terms
Written texts provide the best record for identifying early color terms. However, most ancient languages didn’t use writing systems to transcribe spoken words until 3,000-4,000 years ago. This makes it very difficult to definitively determine the oldest color words. Early languages almost certainly contained color terms that were never formally recorded. Nonetheless, linguists and anthropologists have used indirect methods like comparing modern languages and analyzing color words in ancient texts to reconstruct some of the earliest names for colors.
Anthropological studies have shown some basic color categories to be cultural universals, suggesting they have extremely ancient origins in human cognition that predate recorded history. Black, white and red appear in the vocabularies of virtually all cultures, pointing to their primal significance since prehistoric times. Combining anthropology, linguistics and archaeology provides clues about the relative ages of key color terms:
Black, white and red – Prehistory
The most widely recognized basic color terms across cultures are black, white and red. This indicates they were likely the first colors named by humans, emerging alongside early languages in prehistoric eras. Ancient bones, cave artworks and artifacts reveal that prehistoric peoples distinguished these colors when incorporating them into functional tools and abstract designs.
Yellow and green – Circa 1500–1000 BCE
Yellow and green are also universal colors, appearing in nearly all cultures’ vocabularies. Written texts from East Asia, the Middle East and Mediterranean regions show these terms dating back to the mid-2nd millennium BCE, suggesting they developed along withBronze Age civilizations.
Blue – Circa 1000–500 BCE
Blue is notable as a more recent addition to languages that was relatively rare or absent in ancient texts. This may be tied to it being rare in nature compared to warm colors, making it less universally salient. The earliest known written terms for blue appeared around 3,000 years ago in Ancient Egyptian and Chinese writing. This signifies blue as a key new color distinction that emerged with technology to produce blue dyes and pigments.
Purple, pink, orange, grey – Circa 500 BCE–400 CE
Secondary color terms like purple, pink, orange and grey are first documented over the last 2,500 years. They gradually emerged alongside dye and pigment innovations that made these colors more technologically and culturally accessible in the ancient world. Greek, Roman and Chinese texts show these terms increasingly defined during the 1st millennium BCE to 1st millennium CE as new colors entered societies’ vocabularies in parallel with advances in arts, dyes, fabrics and painted media.
The evolution of key color terms
Examining the specific etymological origins and semantic evolution of ancient color words provides more insights into how color vocabularies emerged and expanded over time as human societies developed. Tracing the histories of common color terms illustrates the close connections between material culture, technology and language.
Black
Black is likely one of the earliest colors named, emerging in conjunction with the controlled use of fire during prehistory. The Proto-Indo-European root *kweg- meaning “to burn” gave rise to words indicating things burnt or darkened with fire and soot across many languages. This includes ancient terms like the Sanskrit kala/krishna, Greek kuanos, Latin carbo and Old English sweart.
White
White also has a Proto-Indo-European root in *kwintos meaning “shining” or “bright,” yielding terms like Latin albus, Old Irish finn, Lithuanian šviesa and Sanskrit śveta. Associating whiteness with shining light sources like the sun, moon and stars is logical across cultures. Other white terms like Old English hwīt and hwit may have been linked to milk.
Red
Red descends from Proto-Indo-European *reudh- meaning “red” or “ruddy,” giving Latin ruber, Old Church Slavonic ruda and Old Irish derg among others. Red held ritual and symbolic importance in many ancient cultures given its connection to blood and life. Herringbone stone beads colored with ochre from 50,000 years ago indicate red held early significance.
Yellow
Proto-Indo-European seems to have lacked a term for yellow. But Ancient Egyptian irtyw, Chinese huáng, Sanskrit hari and other terms independently emerged to describe the color of sun, plants, gold and dyes made from saffron and other yellow flower stigmas. This reflects yellow’s significant visibility in nature and human environments.
Green
While other languages had words for green like Ancient Egyptian wad, the main Greek term khloros meaning “greenish-yellow” became the root for similar words across Europe like chlorophyll. It was associated with the color of vegetation, reflecting green’s growing linguistic prominence as societies became more agricultural.
Blue
Blue was little distinguished from black, green or grey in many ancient languages. But new words like Ancient Egyptian ḫsbḏ, Chinese lán, and Sanskrit nīla emerged in written texts to describe the color of the day sky, lapis lazuli gemstones and new blue pigments. This illustrates blue’s increasing cultural salience.
Theories on the chronological emergence of color terms
Scholars analyzing the growing vocabulary of color terms in ancient texts and across cultures proposed theories to explain why they emerged in a roughly chronological order:
Basic color term sequence – Berlin & Kay (1969)
Seminal research by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay detailed a universal pattern in how color vocabularies consistently expanded over time that correlated with cognitive salience:
- Black and white
- Red
- Yellow or green
- Yellow and green
- Blue
- Brown
- Purple, pink, orange, grey
This sequence reflects the relative prominence and importance of certain colors in the natural visual world during humanity’s early development.
Ecological and technological factors – Wierzbicka (2008)
Linguist Anna Wierzbicka proposed the emergence of color terms reflects their economic and technological significance within a culture rather than just visibility:
- Black and white – Basic elemental contrast, evoking day/night and sun/moon.
- Red – Signaling blood, food plants and ritual symbols like ochre.
- Yellow/Green – Ripening crops and vegetation, economic importance grows with agriculture.
- Blue – Increasing value from natural rarity, pigment innovations.
- Purple, Pink, Orange, Grey – Complex cultural associations develop.
This model emphasizes practical socioeconomic factors driving naming of colors.
Anthropological universalism – Berlin & Kay (1991)
Berlin and Kay’s later work asserted the sequence of color term emergence corresponded to innate neurobiological constraints in human visual processing and categorization. This perspective argues for linguistic color categorization as an evolutionary adaptation.
Conclusion
Understanding the origins of color terms provides a window into ancient cultures and how humans learned to define their visual world. While the first named colors can’t be pinpointed, evidence suggests black, white and red were likely the earliest. Yellow, green, blue and other primary colors gradually gained recognition over thousands of years alongside technological changes expanding the prominence of new dyes, pigments and materials. Tracing color etymologies illustrates the interplay between perception, cognition, language and culture in human societies.
Examining the emergence order of color vocabularies shows a consistent evolutionary sequence that reflects universal aspects of human neurobiology, material cultures and technological development. As material technologies made new colors more salient and cultures ascribed them greater symbolic meaning, terms were coined that became embedded in languages. This shows how color language both shapes and is shaped by human ecology and experience of the physical world over history.
The origins and meanings of the familiar color words we use today link back to those used by humanity’s earliest civilizations and even prehistoric peoples. We carry this linguistic legacy that reveals the ever-evolving diversity of human perception and cognition.