The present study examined 12 Chinese character and phrase dictionaries, namely the Book of Cangjie, Erya, Book of Jijiu, Shuowen Jiezi, Shiming, Guangya, Book of Yu, Guangyun, Zhengzitong, Kangxi Dictionary, Zhonghua Da Zidian, and Ciyuan Compilation Dictionary, to elucidate the presentation of Chinese characters and phrases that represent color as well as determine the evolution of these characters and phrases. The results obtained in the present study can serve as a basis for the formulation of conventional Chinese color names.
This study conducted a statistical analysis to determine the number of color characters and phrases in each of the dictionaries. The results indicated that the Book of Cangjie comprised nine characters and one phrase, Erya comprised 71 characters and 10 phrases, the Book of Jijiu comprised 42 characters and five phrases, Shuowen Jiezi comprised 232 characters, Shiming comprised 35 characters and three phrases, Guangya comprised 124 characters and 20 phrases, the Book of Yu comprised 441 characters, Guangyun comprised 435 characters, Zhengzitong comprised 537 characters, the Kangxi Dictionary comprised 776 characters, Zhonghua Da Zidian comprised 1,084 characters, and the Ciyuan Compilation Dictionary comprised 252 characters and 542 phrases. Regarding radical distribution, the top four radicals in descending order of quantity were hei (黑; black), mi (糸), ma (馬; horse), and bai (白; white).
The color characters and phrases recorded in the aforementioned character and phrase dictionaries can be mainly categorized as one types, namely, characters and phrases that represent abstract concepts, such as xun, qian jiang (纁,淺絳; light red, represented by a painted porcelain vase found in the late Qing dynasty) and tong ye se, huang he se (桐葉色,黃褐色; color of a maple leaf, yellowish-brown color). A characterization by “character group” revealed that the top groups in descending order of quantity were black, red, white, color status, cyan and blue, yellow, colorful, green and purple, and gold. Among these groups, color status refers to the characters and phrases that describe the appearance of color, such as ban, se bu chun (斒,色不純; stripes, impure color) and shang se, yen se zhi shang deng zhe (上色,顏色之上等者; premier color, color of high quality).
From early to modern history, Chinese characters and phrases that represent color appeared in five forms, specifically (1) single color characters or phrases, (2) combinations of modifiers and color, (3) combination of two or more color characters or phrases, (4) metaphors, and (5) synonyms of single color characters or phrases. In the 12 character and phrase dictionaries reviewed in the present study, Forms (1) to (5) appeared 1,655, 1,375, 1,350, 656, and 434 times, respectively. Excluding the modifiers that appear in the color phrases under Form (2), Forms (3) through (5) also included 88, 7, and 434 modifiers, respectively. These results verify the prevalent use of modifiers. The number of modifying characters and phrases that appeared in both early and modern history was 24 and 6, respectively. Specifically, this study inferred that shen (深; deep), qian (淺; shallow), qie (竊; shallow), chun (純; pure), zheng (正), nong (濃; thick, concentrated), dan (淡; light), an (暗; dark), an (闇; dark), sheng (盛), tai (太), xian (鮮; bright), yan (艷; bright), da (大), nen (嫩), e (惡; evil), jie (潔; pure), ying (瑩; crystal clear), jiao (焦; charred), shen (甚), wei (微), ban (斑; strips), wu (污; dirt), za (雜; mixed), bu chun (不純; impure), he ran (赫然), xian ming (鮮明; bright), xian sheng (鮮盛), hao hao (皓皓), and weng weng ran (翁翁然) were the most commonly employed modifiers. Among these modifiers, qian (淺), shen (深), xian (鮮), dan (淡), and an (暗) most frequently appeared. In addition, this study found an increased appearance of compound modifiers in modern history, particularly in the form of “adverb + adjective,” such as te shen (特深; extremely deep) and zui qian (最淺; shallowest, lightest), among others. When classifying color characters and phrases using hue, saturation, and lightness, characters and phrases that express saturation contain more modifiers than those that express lightness do.