Just how many colors are there?

• Position: YOUR LIFE - New research about colors across different cultures - Brief article

From Abidji to English to Zapoteco, the perception and naming of color is remarkably consistent in the world's languages. Across cultures, people tend to classify hundreds of different chromatic colors into eight distinct categories: red, green, yellow or orange, blue, purple, brown, pink, and grue (green or blue), note researchers from Ohio State University, Columbus.

Some languages classify colors into fewer categories, but even these are composites of those eight listed above, explains Delwin Lindsey, associate professor of psychology. "Though culture can influence how people name colors, inside our brains, we're pretty much seeing the world in the same way. It doesn't matter if you're a native of the Ivory Coast who speaks Abidji or a Mexican who speaks Zapoteco."

Lindsey and Angela Brown, associate professor of optometry, used data from the World Color Survey, a collection of color names supplied by 2,616 people of 110 mostly unwritten languages. The survey's 320 different colors are organized into eight rows of 40 color chips per row. (Black, white, and grays are each in their own category.) The researchers used the survey because it includes many people from preindustrial societies whose color names are thought to be relatively uncontaminated by contact with highly industrialized cultures whose color names closely resemble those...