This word has its origin in the German language spoken by the invaders of the Iberian Peninsula in the middle ages. In Latin niger was used to name the shiny black colour. The word v irĭdis was used in Latín to name the same colour… but also to make reference to vigorous and full of life things. The link between both concepts has to be found in the colour of the skin when people have liver problems: bile was called bitter humor. The name of this color has its origin in the word that was used in Latin to make reference to the bitter taste. Then the same word was used to make reference to the color of that entity. The word naranja has an Arabic origin, and it was used to name the fruit. What was first, the colour or the fruit? The answer is simple: the fruit. Before that, terms such as bermejo, colorado or encarnado were commonly used by Iberian speakers. It comes from the Latin word russus, used to make reference to a specific tone of red: dark red. The noun red is used in Spanish since the 15 th century. Languages connected with Spanish usually have a name for that color in which the structure bl + vowel/s is present: bleu, in French blau, in Catalan… In Spanish that formula has been replaced by azul : this word come from the Arabic lazawárd, name given to the deep-blue metamorphic rock lapis lazuli. The topic of the colors has generated a lot of papers among anthropological and linguistic researchers, specially about the connection between language and perception: do we perceive better the tonal differences between those tones that have a name in our language? In this article we will not put the focus on the linguistic determinism, but, simply, in the origin of some color names in Spanish. Vinikunka aka Montaña de Siete Colores aka Rainbow Mountain, Peru (photo by Where do the names of the colors in Spanish come from?
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