: Why do we call it pink and not light red like we do with other colors?
In: 6
Ancient and/or primitive cultures typically have very few words for colours. It usually starts with “dark colour, light colour and red”.
Over time more names are added to specify particular colours. English now has words for every conceivable colour, like Kelly Green or Goldenrod Yellow.
At some early point in English, it was decided that pink was more important than “light green”, so we have a common word for it. In Russian, there is a commonly used word for light blue.
Edit: I’ve been living under a common misconception about ancient Greece! Removed a paragraph.
Colour names are purely convention developed in a specific language. In English, people like to make a distinction between pink and light red, but not between light and dark blue. In Russian, light and dark blue have two completely unrelated terms, and are not considered shades of one colour. In Japanese, all blue and many green (but not green of say grass or leaves or tea) are denoted by a single term (ao), to the point that some traffic lights have a blue/blueish green light instead of what is considered standard green in many other places. Languages come up with terms for things that make sense in certain uses and at certain times, and lose words when those are no longer needed.
I just want to point out that the color of watermelon flesh could be described as a light red, but hot pink simply couldn’t. It has enough blue to it to be it’s own color. It would actually sit outside a rainbow.
The color pattern in language is:
All languages contain terms for black and white.
If a language contains three terms, then it contains a term for red.
If a language contains four terms, then it contains a term for either green or yellow (but not both).
If a language contains five terms, then it contains terms for both green and yellow.
If a language contains six terms, then it contains a term for blue.
If a language contains seven terms, then it contains a term for brown.
If a language contains eight or more terms, then it contains terms for purple, pink, orange or gray.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_color_naming_debate
The 6 first terms on the 6 terms of the color opponent theory (wtite-black, red-green, yellow-blue)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opponent_process#:~:text=While%20the%20trichromatic%20theory%20defines,and%20process%20information%20from%20cones.
The other terms are mixtures of the most common words (most include red)
Brown: black, red, yellow
Purple: red, blue
Pink: red, white
Orange: red, yellow
Gray: white, black
So the main reason is that red is the most important color to human being after white and black so its intermediate colors are more often named. Black and white intermediate colors are less often named since the adjective light and dark are pretty common.
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