# Balto-Slavic: Names of colors



## EuropeanOrigin

Hi, are one of you able to show me the reconstructed Balto Slavic and Proto Slavic words for the names of the following colors, red, black, gold and yellow. Are the last two derivatives from the same root?


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## Panceltic

Proto Slavic:

red: **čьrvenъ* or **rudъ*
black: **čьrnъ*
gold: **zoltъ*
yellow: **žьltъ
*
Proto Balto Slavic:

red: **raudas*
black: **kiršnas*
gold: same root as yellow
yellow: **giltas
*
I am not entirely sure about Balto Slavic reconstructions, please correct me if they're wrong.


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## iobyo

Panceltic said:


> I am not entirely sure about Balto Slavic reconstructions, please correct me if they're wrong.


  The _Etymological Dictionary of the Slavic Inherited Lexicon_ (Derksen, 2008) lists the etymons *roudos, *kirsnos and *gilʔ-.


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## EuropeanOrigin

Thanks guys. It is easy to see how the colors black, yellow and gold came to be but how did *roudos turn into cherveno and crveno? What was in between?


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## Pribina

EuropeanOrigin said:


> but *how *did *roudos turn into cherveno and crveno? What was in between?



It didn't. That Baltic word is related to Slavic *rudъ (already mentioned in this thread) which has become archaic, regional or marked in most Slavic languages.

*čьrvenъ (_red_) is related to to *čьrvь which means _worm_ and is related to the Baltic and PIE term for worm.


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## Panceltic

Pribina said:


> *čьrvenъ (_red_) is related to to *čьrvь which means _worm_ and is related to the Baltic and PIE term for worm.



That's true. A kind of worm was supposedly used to obtain red dye, hence the name of the colour.



Pribina said:


> archaic, regional or marked in most Slavic languages



In Slovenian, we say *rdeč* for the colour; related words are *rdeti* (to become red), *zardeti *(to blush), *rdečiti* (to redden), *rja* (<*rd-ja) (rust).

On a side note, for the colour yellow we use *rumen*, which is not related to *gilʔ- in any way. In fact, it comes from yet another Slavic word for the colour red! The word *žolt* is, in our case, archaic, regional or marked.


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## osemnais

I always thought red and black share the same root, the same one for words for 'worm' and 'intestine'.
What about colour blue? There are multiple words for it in different languages AFAIK. Have their etymologies been determined?


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## ahvalj

osemnais said:


> What about colour blue? There are multiple words for it in different languages AFAIK. Have their etymologies been determined?


*Dark blue* is _siņь_ from the IE root *_skʸeı̯H₂_- "to shine" and is related to _sьjati_ and outside Slavic e. g. to the English _shine_.
*Light blue* is _modrъ_ in West and South Slavic, with no accepted etymology (not impossibly from *_modhro_- and then related to Hittite _antara_- from *_m̥dhro_-). In East Slavic it is _golǫbъ_ from the word _golǫbь_ "pidgeon" (compare also _voronъ_ "dark black" from _voronъ_ "raven"), which, together with the Latin _columba_, is of an unknown origin and is probably borrowed from a third language.


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## rjirtu

does anyone have any idea what might be the protoslavic word for 'colour'?


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## ahvalj

Judging from the Old Church Slavonic and southern Old East Slavic _cvětъ,_ the north-western Old East Slavic _květe_, the Polish _kwiat_ etc., it was _*ku̯ētV_ (where _V_ is some vowel, the ancestor of the above final _ъ_ and _e_). That's the form of the 7–8th centuries. A millennium earlier its proto-type should have sounded as something like _*ku̯aı̯tas _(that _*ē_ comes from the diphthong is suggested e. g. by _ь<*i_ and _i<*eı̯ _in the related verb: e. g. the Old Church Slavonic _-cvisti, -cvьtǫ_ and the Polish _kwiść_).


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## Hachi25

ahvalj said:


> *Dark blue* is _siņь_ from the IE root *_skʸeı̯H₂_- "to shine" and is related to _sьjati_ and outside Slavic e. g. to the English _shine_.
> *Light blue* is _modrъ_ in West and South Slavic, with no accepted etymology (not impossibly from *_modhro_- and then related to Hittite _antara_- from *_m̥dhro_-). In East Slavic it is _golǫbъ_ from the word _golǫbь_ "pidgeon" (compare also _voronъ_ "dark black" from _voronъ_ "raven"), which, together with the Latin _columba_, is of an unknown origin and is probably borrowed from a third language.



Except that (at least) in Serbo-Croatian _modar _is dark blue, while _sinji_ would represent that grey-blue color of the sea. Although usually the adjective _plav_ is used as a generalization for all shades of blue.


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## ahvalj

Yes, the problem is that words for colors often change their meanings. For the Slavic words for "blue" one can check pages in different languages here Blue - Wikipedia

Judging from the name of the bird синица — Викисловарь the meaning related to "shine" was present at some point in this adjective as well.

By the way, Baltic-Finnic and Mordovian have the same word for "blue" ([ETY] Eesti etümoloogiasõnaraamat & Sininen – Wikipedia & Сэнь — Википедиясь) borrowed from some Indo-European language. It could have been Russian if not the Mordovian _e_ in the root, suggesting a more ancient East European source (the standard suggestion in such cases is Indo-Iranic).


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## Hachi25

They do, but it is still interesting that, as far as I can remember at the moment, East Slavic languages are the only ones where _sinь _today means _dark blue_. Everywhere else the meaning varies from _light blue_ (Slovene), _greyish blue_ (Serbo-Croatian, although archaic, but present in the national anthem of Croatia: _sinje more_) or it is a generic term for blue (like, if I'm not mistaken, in Bulgarian and Macedonian, where _син _and _модър/модар_ (at least in the dictionary) mean one and the same).

As for the bird, Max Vasmer is rarely wrong, but I believe he is with that conclusion. First of all, his explanation doesn't cover all Slavic languages; in Western ones the name is bogatka or sikora (Polish) and sýkora/sýkorka (Czech and Slovak), which doesn't seem likely to be connected with the word _sinь_. Apart from that, there is no plausible explanation that would connect the name of the bird in South Slavic languages with the same adjective, because in Macedonian it is_ сипка_, and in Serbo-Croatian it clearly implies the word for _shadow_: _s(j)enica _< _s(j)ena_; and in some dialects even the word for _fall: jesen < jesenica. _In Bulgarian is, on the other hand, _синигер_, which has Arabic and onomatopoeic origin. Even Hungarian has a similar word: _széncinege._

If the name of the bird is in any way connected with colors, I would opt for the color _grey_ (also one of the meanings of the word _sinь_), but not for _shining_ in any way. And if P. Skok (Etimologijski rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika, Knjiga druga, 1988) is to be trusted in this case, he explains that all connections with the word _sinь _are purely folk etymology and that all names for the bird have a common root in the onomatopoeic _si-_, which is the approximation of how the bird's singing sounds, which then over time due to various reasons changed and evolved to any of the forms that corresponded with other words that already existed in the extralinguistic world, hence the connection with the words for _shadow _and _fall_ in Serbo-Croatian. 

Of course, both views have their own positive and negative sides, and neither of them is a 100% conclusive; we can only speculate what the real etymology is here.


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## ahvalj

I recall having already written something about the blue color in Slavic a few years ago, with examples from the literature etc., but I can't find it right now.

My impression after looking through several papers on the usage of colors in ancient Slavic is that people then had a different set of criteria for delimiting colors. For example, the four-volume Czech dictionary of Old Church Slavonic (1966–1997) gives two translations of _син҄ь/siņь:_ (1) dark, blackish, dull [in _Proverbs_ 23: 29] and (2) blue [_nebo siņeje_]. There is no _**modrъ_ in the dictionary. _Бахилина НБ · 1975 · История цветообозначений в русском языке: _174–179 mentions for Old East Slavic the basic meaning "blue; bright blue" and that it is used to describe the bluish tint of the skin and the color of the beaten body, the dark bluish cloud and mist, even the color of the soot and of cold iron. Hard to tell what was the development from "shiny" to "blue" and when and how it occurred in Slavic.

_Sinica_ exists also in Slovene (Velika sinica - Wikipedija, prosta enciklopedija). I actually meant not to cite Vasmer's explanation but rather to provide the photo of the bird and the list of Slavic correspondences. My personal observation is that where I live the tit is the brightest bird after the gull (I saw the last bullfinch in the eighties) and it is very peculiar because of its yellow underparts which contrast to the grey and brown of other local birds. So, it I had to invent the name for this bird, "bright" would be among the obvious choices for derivation.


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## Hachi25

The problem here is that nobody can tell for sure if _sinь _is connected with grey, shiny or with both. It seems like it was connected with both at some point, and its meaning only grew with time, but I don't see how we could determine what the original meaning was or if the word even had one distinctive meaning at some point in time. Even the etymology of the word is unclear, let alone all of its possible meanings.

As far as the bird goes, the name is old enough that we can't be sure what the bird population looked like when the bird got its name. It might be connected with words for _shadow_, _bright_, _fall_ and many others, but I would still opt for the onomatopoeic origin. All of this would make sense, and still it doesn't have to be connected at all. After all, _sinica_ does exist in Slovenian, but so does _jesenica_, even if it is archaic or geographically limited today.


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