As a native speaker of Turkish I must admit that we have a huge vocabulary of color names but when it comes to use them in our daily life we simply fail. We -especially guys- mostly use just the main colors. So I could say you will not have trouble handling with color names in your daily conversations.
As my blog focuses on foreigners who learn Turkish I will try to explain all the things that I suppose you might wonder or misunderstand. If you happen to have any questions, just ask in the comments.
Main colors
Siyah: Black
Siyah saçlı kız
Girl with black hair
Beyaz: White
Beyaz bir gömlek
A whit shirt
Kırmızı: Red
Kırmızı bir elma
A red apple
Mavi: Blue
Mavi gökyüzü
Blue sky
Sarı: Yellow
Sarı yapraklar
Yellow leaves
Yeşil: Green
Yeşil elmalar
Green apples
Pembe: Pink
Pembe bir balon
A pink balloon
Kahverengi: Brown
Brown shoes
Kahverengi ayakkabılar
Mor: Purple
Mor bir elbise
A purple dress
Turuncu: Orange
Turuncu kapaklı bir kitap
A book with orange cover
Gri: grey
Gri bir duvar
A grey wall
Shades of colors
You can easily describe shades of colors by adding some adjectives before the color name. Açık is the adjective that you must use to describe “light” color. And “koyu” instead of “dark”. In some contexts “kapalı” can be applied instead of the word koyu.
Açık yeşil / Light green
Koyu mavi / Dark blue
Another adjective that you might encounter concerning the shades of colors is “parlak” or “canlı”
Parlak beyaz / Bright white
Canlı sarı / Vivid yellow
The word “soluk” is an adjectives which can be used to describe faded or lurid colors.
Soluk sarı / Buff (faded yellow)
Soluk renkli / Faded color
More color names
Lacivert: Navy
Lacivert takım elbise
A navy suit
Krem: Cream
Krem perdeler
Cream curtains
Bej: Beige
Bej bir valiz
A beige suitcase
Eflâtun or Leylak: Lilac
Lila masa örtüsü
Lilac tablecloth
Fuşya: Fuchsia
Fuşya yastıklar
Fuschia pillows
Bordo: Magenta
Bordo bir koltuk
A magenta sofa
Turkuvaz: Turquoise
Turkuvaz sular
Turquoise waters
Haki: Khaki
Haki bir manto
A khaki coat
Interesting facts
I could say there are some interesting facts about color names in Turkish. First of all, most of them are borrowed from the languages of neighboring nations. Such as siyah coming from Persian; mor coming from Armenian, kırmızı coming from Arabic etc.
Of course we do have real Turkish equivalent of these colors but the language is a living organism and this organism -for now- prefers the use the borrowed words more than others! With some subtle differences though! So be careful, they mostly cannot be used interchangeably.
For example:
Kızıl is the equivalent of the color red. But this word has lost its popularity and now used in a relatively limited context such as:
Kızıl saç / Red hair
Kızıldeniz / The Red Sea
Kızıl Meydan / The Red Square
Kızılay / The Red Crescent
Kızılötesi / Infrared
Kızılderili / Indian (red skin - no derogatory aspect in Turkish)
Kızılçam / Red pine
Kızıl geyik / Red deer
Ak is the synonym of the color white. But this word as well got out of use as color name. However it is still widely used in some contexts. It figuratively signifies “positivity”.
Ak saçlı / white hair
Akdeniz / literally Whitesea (meaning Mediterranean Sea)
Kara is the synonym of the color black. This word has a bit more use when compared to others. It figuratively signifies “negativity” as antonym of ‘ak’.
Kara gün / Lit. ‘Black day’ unfortunate day, difficult times
Kara para / Black money
Karadağ / Montenegro
Kara bulutlar / Black clouds
Kara tren / Black train
Kara yazı / Unhappy fate, bad destiny
Karadeniz / Black Sea
Kara delik / Black holes
Kara gözlü / Black eyed (more poetic way of saying siyah gözlü)
Karaborsa / Black market
Kır is old Turkish word for grey (gri) which we borrowed from French. It has really limited use nowadays in modern language but widely used in countryside as an equivalent of gri.
Kır saç / Grey hair
Kır at / Grey horse
Boz is old Turkish word for brown. Much before Turks met coffee (note that we call brown as Kahverengi / literally Coffeecolor) we used to have this word instead of kahverengi. It has limited usage in modern language.
Boz ayı / Brown bear
Bozdoğan / Brown falcon
Bozkır / Steppe
Advanced level
As I told at the beginning of this post, Turkish vocabulary about colors is so rich even if we do not use it almost at all in our daily lives. These colors are mostly named after a fruit, vegetable, flower, animal or an object with a distinct color and are mostly compound names.
Elâ / Yellowish light brown (used only as eye color)
Kavuniçi / Light orange (Literally Inside of a melon)
Yavruağzı / Pinkish orange
Çingene pembesi / Hot pink
Mercan / Coral
Camgöbeği / Cyan
Tozpembe / Light pink
Erguvan / Vivid purple
Fıstık yeşili / Pistachio green
Gülkurusu / Dusty rose (Literally dried rose)
Hardal / Mustard
Siklamen / Fuchsia, dark pink
Tütün rengi or Taba / Tobacco
Asker yeşili / Military green
Çivit / Indigo
Nefti / Dark green
Balköpüğü / Honey gold
Çimen yeşili / Lime
Menekşe / Violet
Zümrüt / Emerald
Sütlü kahve / Light brown (literally coffee with milk)
Devetüyü / Camel
Bright shades
Some objects’ colors can be described by using names of metals just as in English.
Altın, altun, altuni, altunî, gold and dore which all have the same meaning can be encountered. They all means gold or golden.
Gümüş, gümüşi, gümüş all mean silver, silver color.
Madeni, madenî is a general word for metallic grey color.
Bakır means copper in Turkish and thus means copper red.
Some more info
Mixed colors or multicolored objects can be often described with the adjectives “alaca, ala, alacalı, alaca bulaca, ebruli, ebrulî”
The word “renkli” can be used as an equivalent of both “colorful” and “colored". It also gives the word a positive meaning.
Renkli bir kişilik / A colorful personality (meaning joyful)
Renkli yaşamlar / Colorful lives (meaning enjoyable)
Or
Kestane renkli / Chestnut colored
Bal renkli / Honey colored
You may sometimes encounter compound colors like “kırmızı-beyaz, sarı-lacivert, siyah-beyaz, sarı-kırmızı, bordo-mavi”. These usually signifies football teams - respectively National football team, Fenerbahçe, Beşiktaş, Galatasaray and Trabzonspor.
Intensified colors
Turkish has a very interesting grammatical rule to intensify or emphasize some adjectives- particularly color names. You simply get the first syllable of the color name and you add the letter p, m or s to it to create the intensifying prefix. There is not a general rule about which letter to use.
I know you are confused! Don’t worry! You don’t need to memorize this truly unnecessary rule as it has only a few example in entire language! Note that they cannot be applied to all color names. All possible combinations are listed below. Apart from these examples, do not use this prefix.
Kara / Kapkara
Ak / Apak
Siyah / Simsiyah
Beyaz / Bembeyaz
Kızıl / Kıpkızıl
Kırmızı / Kıpkırmızı
Sarı / Sapsarı
Yeşil / Yemyeşil
Mavi / Masmavi
Mor / Mosmor
Pembe / Pespembe
Although the examples above are used frequently and can be found in dictionaries; there are some acceptable common mistakes. You can hear in daily life conversations “tupturuncu, laplacivert and gıpgri.
More suffixes for colors
-imsi and -imtırak (both are applied according to vowel harmony rules) are two suffixes that describes the quality of the color. When added, they implies that the color is not really that color; but reminds of that color. Even though -imtırak is falling slowly out of use you can use those suffixes especially when you don’t really know the exact name of the color. Just look at the object and think which color it reminds you of. More or less green? Then say "yeşilimsi bir elbise” (a greenish dress). Kind of yellow? Then say “sarımtırak bir çanta” (a yellowish bag)
Note that the suffix -imtırak is often mistakenly written as -imtrak.
Note that the color names that can be used with -imsi and -imtırak are just a few: Beyazımsı, siyahımsı, yeşilimsi, mavimsi, kırmızımsı, yeşilimsi, morumsu, pembemsi, kahvemsi/kahverengimsi, turuncumsu, grimsi, lacivertimsi and bordomsu.
Changing or gaining colors
With the suffix -ermek or -armak, you can easily form verbs about color changes. But this requires some specialization as you must remove some letters from the end of the word. Note that only the colors listed below can be turned into verb. Let’s see examples:
Kara: Kararmak (to become dark, to become black)
Ak: Ağarmak (to become white/whitened)
Kızıl: Kızarmak (to become red)
Sarı: Sararmak (to become yellow, to fade)
Yeşil: Yeşermek (to become green, to leaf out)
Mor: Morarmak (to become purple)
Boz: Bozarmak (to become brown)
Mavi: Göğermek (to become blue) *Note that the old word for blue in old Turkish was gök (meaning sky) which is no longer used as color name.
You might ask now about other colors. We have another suffix that you can apply for almost all other color names: -leşmek /-laşmak.
Kırmızılaşmak, Mavileşmek, Siyahlaşmak, Beyazlaşmak, Pembeleşmek etc.
Lack of colors?
To describe transparency -like glass- you can use the word “şeffaf” or “saydam”.
Lack of color is described with the word “renksiz” (colorless, uncolored) This word can also be used in a critical way to imply that the environment or the object has very dark colors or has no joy)
Renksiz bir ortam
A dark environment.
Renksiz bir adam
A dull man
Colors for humans
When it comes to human organ colors Turkish has some peculiarities. See these examples which are often not interchangeable with other color names.
Human hair (on the head) can be:
Siyah: Black. Kara can be used in poetic language but not in daily life.
Beyaz: White, grey. As I told above “kır” also can be used.
Sarı: Yellow. Yeah it sounds quite funny but the Turkish word for blond hair is “sarı / yellow”
Kahverengi: Brown hair
Kumral: Light brown. A shade between blond and brown.
Kızıl / Red. Note that you cannot use “kırmızı” instead. "Kırmızı saç” will imply a really red hair like tomato!
When it comes to skin colors or races, the words that can be used are:
Beyaz / White, Caucasian
Siyah, Siyahi, Zenci / Black (Note that the word Siyahi and Zenci are synonyms and neither of them has pejorative meaning)
Kızılderili / Red, American Indian (Note that this word has no derogatory meaning)
Sarı ırk / Yellow race
Esmer / Brunette (Not that this description is used for white people who has darker skin and not for Blacks)
Açık tenli / Fair skin
You might see some color names taking the suffix -ce -ca, -çe, -ça. This means -having shades or variations of a specific color-
Yeşilce bir kapak: A cover having shades of green
Sarıca bir böcek: A yellowish insect
Kızılca kıyamet: A bloody riot
Karaca: Turkish name for Deer
Gökçe: A unisex given name especially for blue-eyed babies
