| The fact that Greek did not have a word for blue is a myth without any ground. Already in Homer the word for blue was "cuaneos", which means of the color of "cuanos", like "chruseos" (golden) means of the color of "chrusos" (gold). "Cuanos" was initially the name for the blue pigment that now is named "ultramarine blue", which was an expensive pigment imported from Afghanistan. Later, "cuanos" was also used as a name for other cheaper blue pigments that could be used to substitute the expensive ultramarine blue, i.e. for the azurite mined in Cyprus and for the artificial pigment "Egyptian blue". The English word "cyan" comes from the Greek word "cuaneos", but due to a misunderstanding it is used now for blue-green, despite the fact that it was never used for blue-green by the Greeks. In the Ancient Greece and Rome, when blue-green had to be distinguished from green, it was specified as the color of the beryls, or as the color of turquoise, or as the color of the littoral sea. While in Greek there was an unambiguous word for blue, what was missing was a word for green. Green is mentioned very rarely in what I have read, and when it is mentioned they use one of the following expressions: the color of the emeralds (smaragdinos), the color of grass (poodes) or the color of leek (praseos). In the early Greek authors, "chloros" that is now used to mean green in many scientific terms was not used for green, but perhaps for yellow or yellow-green, e.g. Homer uses "chloros" for the color of some honey. |