# Why is pink a color? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 10, 2009, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-pink-a-color/489012 "2009-03-10T22:31:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2009, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-pink-a-color/489012/21 "2009-03-11T05:06:54Z")
> [@Civil\_Guy](#): > > Don’t have much to add, but I was a juror on a trial a couple years ago where one of the witnesses was from Thailand (I think), could only speak that language, and had a translator present for giving testimony. I found the results curious, such as I remember them - when asked what color a car was, the translator responded with roundabout answers, not the answers most any english speaker would use. I believe that a light blue car was indeed described as having the color of the sky, or some such. Yes, the term for “light blue” in Thai is _see fa_, which literally means “sky color.” (Regular blue is _see namngern_, which is water-something. Actually, it would be “silver water,” the _nam_ referring to liquid, but I don’t think that one works literally. But the metal is _ngern_ and the color _see ngern_.) (Thai also has separate words for pink and red. _See chomphu_ for the former and _see daeng_ for the latter.) ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2009, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-pink-a-color/489012/22 "2009-03-11T05:27:20Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I totally disagree. Pink is absolutely thought of as a shade of red. Sometimes it’s it own color, but then so is lilac or puce or chartreuse or ecru. People use pink however they feel and in many different ways. In my experience, however, pink doesn’t get any more special treatment than any other shade of red. I disagree, one example is if you have a five-man-band of some sort in a show, you’re going to have a bunch of primaries and “definite” colors (blue, red, maybe black etc) and “the chick” is almost always gonna be pink, even if there’s someone who’s red whereas you usually wouldn’t have someone both blue and light blue. If that’s not a good comparison, think of how odd it would be for me to come up to you and say “what a nice light-red shirt you have there” if it was a pink shirt you were wearing, but you (well, most people) wouldn’t blink if I described your cyan shirt as a “nice light-blue shirt.” Interestingly enough, wikipedia has color categories for [all the primary/secondary colors of both RGBW and CMYK, but substitutes magenta for pink](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Colors). Maybe I’m reading too much into that though. It also may be different where you are (you’re in the UK, right?) so it could be a cultural divide with the US thinking of pink as more of a distinct color whereas other English speaking nations don’t. (Also, I do disagree somewhat with the finding Cecil cited, there are languages that contain terms for yellow and blue, but not green. In fact, wikipedia has a whole page on languages that treat green as a shade of blue or vice versa [Blue–green distinction in language - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguishing_blue_from_green_in_language). Japanese is a good one, where they have words for yellow (kiiroi) and blue (aoi) but green for the longest time was a shade of blue, and in fact some green (midori, which I don’t think has an adjective form but I could be wrong) things are still described as aoi. Which looking at the relevant section on Wikipedia is almost word for word what it has to say on the subject). ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2009, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-pink-a-color/489012/23 "2009-03-11T06:58:26Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I totally disagree. Pink is absolutely thought of as a shade of red. I disagree too. Pink is just a name given to a modified red. No different than using lavender for a modified purple. But pink is a tint of red, not a shade. Shades are darker versions of the base color, lighter versions are tints. ---
**Author:** ![Bootis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e8c25b/32.png) [@Bootis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bootis)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2009, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-pink-a-color/489012/24 "2009-03-11T07:52:12Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > With such languages, it’s not so much that they don’t recognize blue as a color, as that they would argue that it’s a shade of white, in much the same way that Americans would argue that cerulean is a shade of blue. Well, those Americans who know what “cerulean” is, anyway. Let’s say for an experiment, we have a group of people who speak one of those languages where there is only words for black, white and red. We know they can distinguish between colors, but just that they have no name for them besides red (and white and black, or dark and light). Then lets say one of them is shown a green ball and is told to tell the others to take that ball- then, the the ball is placed among many of distinctly different colors. In this case, just calling it light or dark couldn’t suffice, but he is still able to discern it in his mind clearly from the other balls. I wonder how he would go about communicating that? (without being allowed to say something like “the 4th ball from the left”) I guess there could be several ways to go about it, but I wonder also if it would be something he would have to think about how to do, or if it would just come naturally, and be the same description that any other of the group would have used too. ---
**Author:** ![brujaja](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4af34b/32.png) [@brujaja](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brujaja)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2009, 9:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-pink-a-color/489012/25 "2009-03-11T09:10:40Z")
**RachelChristine** , the short answer is: because a box of Crayola “64 Colors” had a “pink” crayon, and a “light red” crayon. Two separate colors. Also, a “light green”, “light blue”, etc. So, by our collective 6-year-old reasoning, if “light red” was light red, “pink” must be an altogether different animal. Crap, there may even have been a “light pink.” Can you blame us? But, at least we know the difference between perriwinkle and thistle! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2009, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-pink-a-color/489012/26 "2009-03-11T09:36:08Z")
> [@yabob](#): > > Actually, wiki has a fairly lengthy article on color naming, in which they talk about “pink” as well as other things (such as “orange”), and reference the Kay and Berlin studies that Cecil mentioned as well: I’ve been reading a book on “folk-taxonomies,” & the writer goes on & on about color. He makes a good case that Kay & Berlin were so convinced that the English color taxonomy was “complete” that they ignored contrary evidence. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2009, 10:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-pink-a-color/489012/27 "2009-03-11T10:22:45Z")
Do you consider the “Big Six” to be red, orange, yellow, green, blue, & purple? Because that’s totally culturally constructed. Abstract colors, as opposed to colors of things (like “lilac” or “brick”) vary from culture to culture in how they’re defined. The focalities of color (what “yellow” looks like, etc) aren’t exactly the primary colors as defined by retinal response. Chinese tradition has seven “Colors of the Rainbow” roughly translating as red, orange, yellow, green, teal, blue, & purple. One European language (Hungarian?) considers olive a major color, distinct from both yellow & green. (At least, according to Anderson’s [Folk-Taxonomies in Early English](http://www.questia.com/PM.qst;jsessionid=JCQB6VYp11w310BJ1xjttYJwnRZ3G1L1HslJXzyYsPpvkNncPFlr!2216916?a=o&d=113925013)) Western Europeans & Anglophones elevated “orange” (originally the color of oranges) to a major color, but regard “indigo” as just a shade of blue (or, bizarrely, a shade of purple which is not the color of indigo). And “blue” in English covers a range of colors from голубой to синий–a range with as much variety as yellow, orange, & yellow-green put together, lumped under one word. Scientifically, I would consider the Six Big Hue Points on the Color Wheel (as far as present science is concerned) to be red, yellow, green, cyan/turquoise (aka printer’s blue), not-quite-indigo blue, & magenta (which is also pink). But colors as understood psycholinguistically aren’t those compass points.[ul][li]Colors can be defined by luminosity. **This yellow shade** is the same hue & saturation as **this shade half as bright** –but some speakers would define “yellow” not to include the latter.[_]Saturation changes things as well. **This orange** is more or less the same hue & brilliance as **this tan** , but they will be called different colors.[_]And of course “blue” is any sufficiently highly saturated tone between printer’s blue & indigo, except in certain technical applications. Some have tried to say the complement of scarlet red is “cyan”, the complement of orange is “azure”, & the complement of yellow is “blue”–which works for technical purposes, but really, historically, blue, cyan, & azure are all synonyms.[/li][\*]“Red” has sometimes included what we now call “orange” & it’s still quite a broad range, despite some speakers trying to whittle away at by expanding the definition of “orange.” “Orange,” “yellow,” & “purple” cover somewhat narrow ranges by comparison.[/ul] ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2009, 10:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-pink-a-color/489012/28 "2009-03-11T10:28:13Z")
> [@Civil\_Guy](#): > > There would have been more time to distinguish between the deep red that’s a sign of trouble (or victory, if it happens to your enemies), and the pinkish red that’s a sign of health and youth. Or simply that it’s more functionally meaningful. I don’t think it’s about time to develop; ancient man had time. If there were a lot of blue & cyan things in nature such that distinguishing hues & shades of blue was important, we’d have more words for blue that aren’t just names of dyes & precious stones. (Of course, we use names of dyes & precious stones, & metals, for lots of colors. But, say, earth tones & pinks have more terms that come from soils & living things as well as a few more abstract words.) ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2009, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-pink-a-color/489012/29 "2009-03-11T12:09:16Z")
Interesting. I would not have thought of pink as a ‘light red’ at all, but as a separate, non-spectral colour (i.e. not something you’d find in a rainbow, or could get from the colours found in a rainbow simply by varying brightness – like purple, for instance) – there are [dark pinks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink) after all, and they’re not red. So, do pinks actually lie on the axis of varying brightness (between absolute black and absolute white) drawn through some spectral red(s)? ---
**Author:** ![hobscrk777](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a6a055/32.png) [@hobscrk777](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hobscrk777)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2009, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-pink-a-color/489012/30 "2009-03-11T13:10:41Z")
I think both sets of answers here are correct: Pink is in fact a shade of red just as emerald is a shade of green. However, the reason it would be unusual to call a pink shirt light red, but completely ordinary to call an emerald shirt light green, is because of cultural conditioning. For whatever reason, pink has become an established color in its own right, and people are accustomed to this (at least in the US). ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2009, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-pink-a-color/489012/31 "2009-03-11T14:56:23Z")
> [@Bootis](#): > > What would a speaker of these languages (especially 1 and 2) say if they were shown a blue piece of paper and asked what color it is? > Is it just a matter of them not having a specific word, but they would say something like, “It is like the sky”,? I recall reading that there are languages (Welsh and Japanese, maybe?), in which most blues are categorized under “green.” ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2009, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-pink-a-color/489012/32 "2009-03-11T15:15:00Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > I disagree too. Pink is just a name given to a modified red. No different than using lavender for a modified purple. > > But pink is a tint of red, not a shade. Shades are darker versions of the base color, lighter versions are tints. Depends on how you use “tint” and “shade.” To me, “tint” is synonymous with “hue” and “shade” is luminosity (perhaps paired with saturation.) The old TV color controls used to have a “tint” setting, and this would vary the hue (on the magenta to green scale), not make the image lighter or darker. That said, the dictionary seems to give all of the above definitions for “tint” and “shade.” I’ll just stick to hue, saturation, and luminosity for clarity. To me, pink has always been red with a brighter luminosity and a range of saturations, depending on the “deepness” of the pink. As kids, when we used to make a pink substitute using a white crayon and a red crayon. I had never thought of pink as a separate basic color any more than fuschia or lavender or lemon are separate basic colors. I can’t say the same about brown. I’ve always thought of that as a basic color that encompasses dark reds, yellows, and oranges. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2009, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-pink-a-color/489012/33 "2009-03-11T19:03:40Z")
> [@](#): > > “Red” has sometimes included what we now call “orange” & it’s still quite a broad range, despite some speakers trying to whittle away at by expanding the definition of "orange. It still does. When was the last time you saw someone with hair that was actually red? ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2009, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-pink-a-color/489012/34 "2009-03-11T21:39:20Z")
It’s actually quite interesting, as Hungarian has two words for red: _piros_ and _vörös_. The latter has a more “emotional” connotation, and perhaps describes a deeper or darker red, but not necessarily. For example, paprika, paints, red lights, etc. are generally piros, but blood, wine, hair, communism, the Red Cross, even yellow onions, etc. are vörös. Vörös comes from the word meaning blood, _vér_, or bloody _véres_. Piros is the color you would use to describe the “red” in a spectrum, but vörös is generally used for more natural, organic things. But not always (see paprika and peppers [capsicum]). ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2009, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-pink-a-color/489012/35 "2009-03-11T21:59:03Z")
> [@acsenray](#): > > I recall reading that there are languages (Welsh and Japanese, maybe?), in which most blues are categorized under “green.” Traditional Welsh draws the lines differently. There’s no word for brown as such; there’s a ~“dull” color word that overlaps parts of English “brown” & “gray.” There’s another word that overlaps parts of “blue” & “grey,” & then yet another word that covers much of “green” & a chunk of what English speakers call “blue.” I think some of the darker brown shades are tossed in with black. But in modern colloquial Welsh, the English word “brown” is added, the word for ~“dull” is used like English “gray,” the ~“blue-grey” is used like English “blue,” & the ~“green” term is used like English “green.” So they use the English taxonomy with Welsh words. (again from Anderson, _Folk-Taxonomies in Early English_) ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2009, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-pink-a-color/489012/36 "2009-03-11T23:26:12Z")
> [@acsenray](#): > > I recall reading that there are languages (Welsh and Japanese, maybe?), in which most blues are categorized under “green.” It might be the other way around - in Japanese the “green” traffic light is called “aoi” - the word for blue. So you may say that traffic-light green is perceived as a kind of blue, rather than a kind of green. However, to complicate the story a little, Japanese green traffic-lights are often noticeably bluer than ours. Regarding the observation of modern Welsh using English colour taxonomy - I believe the same may be true in Irish. I have a vague memory of noticing that old poems used the word “liath” - grey - for what we would consider blue. But nowadays the word “gorm” corresponds closely to English “blue”. Apart from “duine gorm” which means a black person, not a blue person! People tend to think of languages lacking “blue” as being exotic and primitive. But as far as I know Latin and Ancient Greek both lacked words for blue. The word “blavus” is a mediaeval borrowing from Germanic, and is cognate with “flavus” meaning yellow. For us the sea is blue, for Homer it was “wine-dark”. ---
**Author:** ![RachelChristine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/7ab992/32.png) [@RachelChristine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RachelChristine)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2009, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-pink-a-color/489012/37 "2009-03-12T01:37:20Z")
Wow. This is so amazing. I guess I’ve never really thought about the science and culture behind colors and color names. I also always figured the “normal color wheel” was, you know, right! I am learning so much (as usual). I’m having run researching around the net too, thanks for answering me. I do love to get a big box of Crayons and read through the names. My personal favorite color name I’ve ever seen – Unmellow Yellow. That’s just great! ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2009, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-pink-a-color/489012/38 "2009-03-12T01:49:47Z")
> [@RachelChristine](#): > > I do love to get a big box of Crayons and read through the names. My personal favorite color name I’ve ever seen – Unmellow Yellow. That’s just great! See [here](http://aumha.org/html/colorsw.htm) for the official list of named HTML colors. Some interesting names there. And all defined by standard so they work on html webpages. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2009, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-pink-a-color/489012/39 "2009-03-12T05:06:56Z")
> [@](#): > > I have a vague memory of noticing that old poems used the word “liath” - grey - for what we would consider blue. Clevelanders also use the word “gray” for what most folks would call “blue”. But that’s just because the skies there are perpetually overcast. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2009, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-pink-a-color/489012/40 "2009-03-12T05:39:38Z")
> [@RachelChristine](#): > > Wow. This is so amazing. I guess I’ve never really thought about the science and culture behind colors and color names. I also always figured the “normal color wheel” was, you know, right! I am learning so much (as usual). I’m having run researching around the net too, thanks for answering me. > > I do love to get a big box of Crayons and read through the names. My personal favorite color name I’ve ever seen – Unmellow Yellow. That’s just great! I still like “safety orange.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-pink-a-color/489012.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-pink-a-color/489012.md?page=3)