This is the fourth post in a series on English Color Etymologies. Today we are looking at the colors that come from the names of places and foreign words.
English is a colorful language. Since its birth among the tribes of Europe, English has built its color vocabulary with the wealth of words it has inherited from Anglo-Saxon, Norman French, Latin, and Greek. Collected here are 172 colors that standard dictionaries (I used the American Heritage and the Random House) classify as specific color nouns (these do not, of course, include the standard ten – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, black, grey, white – or any Crayola inventions). This treasure of colors is broken down by etymological origin: is the color the name of a flower, an animal, or even a historical person? Some colors appear twice (when I felt two origins were sufficiently different). Others appear only once though they could certainly fit into several categories.
Ever wonder how a color got its name? Refer to the following and enjoy your new grasp on color!
PLACES
Photo by gadl
From Europe to Asia, place names have become color names. It is not surprising that Italy, birthplace of the Occidental Renaissance, contains many such places.
 From Pompeii, Italy (and the color found on the walls of its houses). |
 From Venice, Italy. |
 From Burgundy, France (and the color of its wine). |
 From Sienna, Italy (short for: terra di sienna, ‘the color of the earth in Sienna’). |
 From Manilla, Philippines (and the color of manilla hemp used to make the paper). |
 From Champagne, France (and the color of its sparkling wine). |
 From Cambodia (and the resin of trees specific to southeast Asia). |
 From Chartreuse, France (and the green liquor made by the monks living there). |
 From Prussia. The dye was discovered by a man living in what is now Berlin (and was Königsberg, the Prussian capital, at the time). |
 From Lajward, Turkestan (where a stone of similar color was mined). |
 From Lajward, Turkestan, modern-day Afghanistan, (where the stone, lapis, was mined). |
 From Persia. |
 From India. |
 From Solferino, Italy (where a battle was fought in 1859, the same year the dye was discovered). |
 From Tyre, ancient Phoenicia, modern-day Lebanon. |
 From Magenta, Italy. |
 From Damascus (where the plum tree grows). |
 From Mocha, Yemen (a port from which coffee was exported). |
 From Gagas, Lycia, modern-day Turkey. |
FOREIGN WORDS
Photo by anyhoo
Foreign languages often play a significant role in helping create new words (in all languages, as in English). Color is no exception.
 French: rosewood. |
 Latin: throat (via an Old French word for a red fur neckpiece). |
 French: raw, unbleached. |
 (Probably) Old French: a color between golden and light chestnut. |
 Italian: baked earth (for ceramics). |
 Latin: chestnut-brown (only used for horses). |
 Old French/Latin: off-white (shifted to brown because of “brun”). |
 Old French: reddish. |
 Urdu: dusty. |
 Latin: sea water. |
 Greek: dark blue (probably a borrowing, origin unknown). |
 Proto-Indo-European: water. |
 French: light of the moon (used to describe a ceramics glaze). |
 Latin: blue/dark blue/blue-green (probably from “heaven, sky”). |
 Latin: beyond the sea (as the dye of this color came from abroad). |
 French: the grey of linen. |
 (Probably) Celtic: dark. |
 Old French: tanned (as of leather). |
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by Laurence Shan
About the Guest Author, Jessica Alexander
Jessica Alexander is a writer, translator, and hopeless devotee of overstuffed dictionaries. For more titillating etymologies, check out dailycharacter. Or, if you just want to send her love letters…