Swart still survives as the word swarthy, while blaek became the modern English black. These are parallelled in Middle English by the terms swart for dull black and blaek for luminous black. Old High German also had two words for black: swartz for dull black and blach for a luminous black. Ater has vanished from the vocabulary, but niger was the source of the country name Nigeria, the English word Negro, and the word for "black" in most modern Romance languages ( French: noir Spanish and Portuguese: negro Italian: nero Romanian: negru). The Ancient Romans had two words for black: ater was a flat, dull black, while niger was a brilliant, saturated black. Kuanos' could mean both dark blue and black. ![]() The Ancient Greeks sometimes used the same word to name different colors, if they had the same intensity. More distant cognates include Latin flagrare ("to blaze, glow, burn"), and Ancient Greek phlegein ("to burn, scorch"). The word black comes from Old English blæc ("black, dark", also, "ink"), from Proto-Germanic * blakkaz ("burned"), from Proto-Indo-European * bhleg- ("to burn, gleam, shine, flash"), from base * bhel- ("to shine"), related to Old Saxon blak ("ink"), Old High German blach ("black"), Old Norse blakkr ("dark"), Dutch blaken ("to burn"), and Swedish bläck ("ink"). ![]()
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