Most of the basic English names for colors—like red, yellow, and green —are among the oldest recorded words in our language and can be traced right back to the Old English period. One ...

Practical, neutral names When it comes to colours lining the displays of paint swatches at a hardware store, names tend to take a more neutral approach.

A computer model reveals how the way we agree on names for colours is more complex than meets the eye.

In English, we might call the color above “sky blue,” or perhaps just “light blue.” But in Japanese, it’s not blue at all. It’s its own color: mizu. It's perceived as a unique hue, as ...

New research investigates how people sequentially add new color terms to languages over time – and the results hold surprises about assumptions linguists have made for 40 years.