I always learned “ROYGBIV” as the colors of the rainbow. Red, orange, yellow, blue, indigo, violet.

What’s up with the last two? Isn’t indigo basically just dark blue? Why is it violet and not purple? Can’t it just be “ROYGBP”?

  • Dewbs84@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Well yes, but the differentiation of colors varies by, believe it or not, culture! For example, the Japanese word for blue, 青 (ao) was used both (depending on context) for what we would call blue and green, and it wasn’t until modern times that a new word, 緑 (midori) started being used to explicitly define what we might call green. Even now, their ‘green’ traffic lights would be described as blue in other cultures. My apologies for the euro-centric over-simplification, but here’s a great article to elaborate further: https://cotoacademy.com/japanese-color-blue-green-aoi-midori-青い-みどり/