Basque ethnography at a glance

The theme of colours is juicy in all languages. Regarding Basque, we first work on the three main universal colours (gorri red, beltz black, zuri white), and in this section we will deal with others, although not all of them.

Hori (yellow): the colour hori is mentioned transversally in the red colour’s section due to its semantic similarity with it (gorri: red, blonde, gold; hori: yellow, blonde; General Basque Dictionary). The colour hori also has a formal similarity with the names gorri (red) and gori (incandescent). There are those who believe that these three words come from the range of colours of fire, such as Arturo Campión. In any case, the word hori to designate the colour yellow is not from yesterday morning, since it appears in a text by Lazarraga in the 16th century; but we can say that in another time it shared the semantic field with the colour red, although red predominated in frequency and extension: urre gorri (red gold) / urre hori (yellow gold). Today we tend to separate both: ilegorri (redhead) / ilehori (blonde).

In Biscayan dialect, on the other hand, we have two other very interesting variants of the colour yellow: beilegi and laru (according to Azkue, the first one meant bright yellow and the second one light yellow). According to Sabino Arana, the word beilegi comes from the word behi (cow). Its formation could be behi (cow) + legez (like) = beilegi (like cow); today we would say behikara (similar to the cow). As for the word laru (light yellow), Arturo Campión reminds us that one of the names for the colour white in Sanskrit is karu. At the moment we cannot take this affirmation further.

Urdin (blue): now we jump to the blue colour. Koldo Mitxelena clarifies the origin of the word: ur (water) + din (similar) = urdin (similar to water). Perhaps for this reason, in addition to the blue that we all know, it has adopted the meanings of the colours and shades of water in different dialects and times, such as white, gray, brown, green, etc. Nowadays, however, the word urdin has acquired the same semantic value as blue in most languages, with a few exceptions that testify to this broader use: ile urdin (blue hair), to mean whitish hair.

Berde: what to say about the colour berde (green)? Although some think otherwise, the word berde is old, since Leizarraga himself used it in the form of pherde in the 16th century. We also have another ancient way to express green (musker) which was been used by the poets Lizardi and Lauaxeta in their compositions. Sabino Arana coined the word orlegi to express the colour green, based on the analogy with the word beilegi, but today few use it (with the exception of the Athletic anthem). In the 20th century, the form hori-urdin (yellow-blue) also appears in the works of several authors to express the colour green, based on chromatic logic.

Arre: to denominate the brown colour we have the word arre. We cannot say much about it, because its etymology is not transparent.

Nabar: one of the meanings of the word nabar is brown; but it also has a different meaning, without leaving the subject of colours. In animals, for example, the adjective nabar usually indicates the mixture of various colours. In any case, it is evident that the colour nabar has had a wide semantic field in the old way.

Ubel: We can also mention the colour ubel to express the colour purple. By etymology it seems that the composition of the word can be ur (water) + bel (black).

There are also more colour words, but they are not of much use or very precise in meaning.

To finish with this series of colours, we will say that, as in most languages, in Basque we also resort to comparisons when defining the shade of colour: ‘gaztain koloreko behorra’ (a chestnut-coloured mare), ‘hauts koloreko zakurra’ (a dust-coloured dog), ‘lur koloreko gabardina’ (an earth-coloured raincoat), ‘erle koloreko aharia’ (a bee-coloured ram).

In summary, as can be seen, the names of colours today do not correspond exactly to the use they were given in the past in Basque. Today we can say that the names of colours are highly universalized, globalized and homologated, but several gemstones have remained in Basque, which can help us better understand the ancient world of the Basques.

Joseba Santxo Uriarte

Philologist and researcher

Translated by the author