Ways of naming the colors blue and yellow in Polish

Abstract

For several weeks now, two colors have dominated the landscape of Polish cities – blue and yellow. In this way, by hanging Ukrainian flags, we show solidarity with the neighboring nation affected by the defeat of the war. The authors of the article analyze the ways of perceiving, and thus naming or describing, these colors by Polish language users. They focus on traditional, commonly used names, as well as methods of describing the shades of both colors. To this end, they use the international RAL system, introduced in 1927 and used by dye manufacturers and traders from various industries. The internationalization of this system made it necessary to work out an appropriate name for each color in each language. The article also includes a short description of the symbolic meanings of both colors. Keywords: colors, nomenclature, descriptive names, semantics, RAL system.