The Scarcity of Universal Colour Names

Gunilla Borgefors

2018

Abstract

There is a trend in Computer Vision to use over twenty colour names for image annotation, retrieval and to train deep learning networks to name unknown colours for human use. This paper will show that there is little consistency of colour naming between languages and even between individuals speaking the same language. Experiments will be cited that show that your mother tongue influences how your brain processes colour. It will also be pointed out that the eleven so called basic colours in English are not universal and cannot be applied to other languages. The conclusion is that only the six Hering primary colours, possibly with simple qualifications, are the only ones you should use if you aim for universal usage of your systems. That is: black, white, red, green, blue, and yellow.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Borgefors G. (2018). The Scarcity of Universal Colour Names.In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Pattern Recognition Applications and Methods - Volume 1: ICPRAM, ISBN 978-989-758-276-9, pages 496-502. DOI: 10.5220/0006649004960502

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icpram18,
author={Gunilla Borgefors},
title={The Scarcity of Universal Colour Names},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Pattern Recognition Applications and Methods - Volume 1: ICPRAM,},
year={2018},
pages={496-502},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0006649004960502},
isbn={978-989-758-276-9},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Pattern Recognition Applications and Methods - Volume 1: ICPRAM,
TI - The Scarcity of Universal Colour Names
SN - 978-989-758-276-9
AU - Borgefors G.
PY - 2018
SP - 496
EP - 502
DO - 10.5220/0006649004960502