An Ephemeral Color

Note: The Spanish word for yellow, amarilla, could be written as either amarillo (m) or amarilla (f), and I'm choosing to the feminine version throughout the newsletter. This has nothing to do with gender, it just makes more sense for some of the comparisons.

Second Note: I frequently refer to al-Andalus, which was in the Iberian Peninsula following the Moorish conquest and the establishment of the Umayyad state in Córdoba in 756 until 1492. One of the lasting effects of al-Andalus was that there are a lot of Arabic roots or words in Spanish. During much of that period, there was religious freedom for all, something that could not be said for the period following 1492.

Some words just stand out as different, and must have a story. The Spanish word for yellow is one of them. It's not that amarilla doesn't sound Spanish, rather it is unlike every other word, in any other language, for yellow.

In this week's newsletter, I go through a few incorrect theories about amarilla's etymology, and then put forward my theory, which I'm assuming is correct. I then suggest an additional theory as to why it is different than every other language.

I also question the etymology of blasphemy.

One night, as I was going through a 19th century etymological dictionary, I came across an entry for amarilla, the color yellow in Spanish.

Amarillo Sp., Pg. amarello yellow, amber-coloured; for ambarillo from ambar amber which is of Arab. origin anbar being prop. a fish supposed to yield ambergris. The word was introduced into Europe by the Phœnicians.
– T.C. Donkin, "An Etymological Dictionary of the Romance Languages", 1864

La Tarjeta Amarilla (Yellow Card) on Amber

In spite of my research last year regarding the etymology of amber, I was initially open to the notion that amarilla comes from the word ambra. The disappearing “B” certainly gave me pause, but I’m sure that there is a way that linguistics would explain that away. 

I'm assuming that the linguists who put forward that theory were attempting to explain why the Spanish language has uses a completely different word to describe the color yellow than the other Romance languages. Assuming a word of Arabic origin would make sense. Spanish is filled with words starting with the Arabic definite article ("al-").

Perhaps one of the reasons they chose chose amber and not some other Arabic word is because the word isn’t something like almarilla, and the “L” doesn’t usually fall away.

Sweet Honey

In Antonio de Nebrija's 1513 dictionary, he says that the color of succinus (which is the Latin word for amber) is melle (honey-colored), without any connection to the word amarilla.

To create a yellow-colored pigment, they would use the mineral oropimente or orpiment (meaning golden color), which is the given translation of jalde, a word that the Germanic people of Lombard in Northern Italy would use for the color yellow. It's probably a linguistic mix between gold and jaune.

Bitter Citrus?

The next dominant theory about the color amarilla is that it is derived from the Latin word amare, meaning “bitter”, somehow extending the taste of bitter to the color. My immediate association would be citrus, with its bitter taste and the bright yellow peel of a lemon.

Sick Day

In one of the earliest 15th century manuscripts I came across, the color is repeatedly used to describe a person’s sickly pallor. In fact, in Antonio de Nebrija's 1513 dictionary, amarillo is translated as “pallidus”, the same root as pale. It’s always interesting to see when a language uses whitish hue or a bluish hue to describe this word, but I would usually associate yellow with a jaundice complexion, which is a specific illness.

Then I noticed the hemerocallis, whose name translates to "beautiful day". Hemero which comes from the Greek ἡμέρα, or "day", whose aspirated η prefixes the starting vowel with an h sound.

(It’s a flower which isn’t yellow, but actually more of a orangish-red, and is one of the flowers people seem to the call the “martagon lily”. Considering that martagon roughly translates to the “blood of Mars”, its fits the color.)

I immediately thought “oh, maybe amarilla is from hemero, meaning yellow like the sun that comes out during the day, as opposed to darkness of the night.”

And that is why amarilla is yellow. Right? Probably not.

Wrong Day

That would be too simple and it would mean more “light” than “pale”.

So I explored the usage of hemero. And it seems it means less “day” as time when the sun is out, and more “day” as in period of time. For example, the hexhemera are the six days of divine creation, or “Ambroiis opus” in Latin. Hemerobios is also used to describe insects (gusano) who live only for a day.

Fleeting Color

The word “ephemeral” is comprised of epi (on) + hemera (a day), it’s about the fleeting nature of a day. An early 17th century Latin text actually compares the cyclical nature of the day (the sun rising and the sun setting) with the hemerobios, or the ephemeral nature of life (bios).

Which makes sense why you would call someone’s color as all the redness is leaving their body, as they are dying, as the pale yellow color of amarilla. It’s not blue, it’s not white, it’s when there is still some life still in the body.

In Latin, hemero also seems to be used as a color word, for a yellowish color, specifically for domesticated cabbage. Cabbage is also bitter. It is more likely that the amare is derived from the same source, which has the added benefit of being an Ecclesiastes-esque description on the nature of life and work. 

Amarilla is therefore used to describe the hemerobios (fleeting nature of life).

The Golden Years

When green is used a euphemism for the young and fresh, yellow would be used to indicate that the vigor and vitality is waning, and white is when it is all gone. Understood this way, describing a period of life as one's "golden years" may be an antiphrasis.

And I've discovered a number of 17th century Spanish texts which associate amarilla with aging, as well as a poem by Luis de Gongora y Argote in 1629 which describes the circular nature of life including the line "La rubia paja, y palida tutora" meaning "the blond hay and the pallid tutor", which makes some sense in context, as the color leaving the aging individual.

Siglo de Oro ó La Edad Amarilla

It is almost comical to read about Spain’s so-called “Golden Age” (literally "golden century", but it was longer than a century), with the monarchy trying to build palatial residences and conquer new lands, with the best writers composing satires on the social order, and the greatest artists or musicians either not natively from Spain or alternately living and working elsewhere. They called their greatest artist Doménikos Theotokópoulos - el Greco, or the Greek.

There were also wars and the plague. One of the last artists of the period, Juan de Valdés Leal, adopted the vanitas theme from the Dutch Golden Age. Two of his later memento mori pieces are called "Finis gloriae mundi" ("end of worldly glories) and "In ictu oculi" ("in the blink of an eye"), featuring skeletons hoarding wealth.  If anything, it felt like a yellowed, dying empire, which can be easily confused with gold. 

Contrasted with the Dutch’s Golden Age, it feels like the fleeting nature was an accurate illustration of what was happening, not illustrated by colorful tulips or golden carrots.

Fleeting Blasphemy

For some reason, the next logical place my mind went was somewhat blasphemous. I wonder if the word blasphemy (or blasphemare) is is somewhat related to ephemeral, from βλάξ-ημερα (blās - stupid, and hemera - fleeting). It couple connected to the idea of saying something vapid, which comes from the word vapor, something that dissipates into the air. It is both without substance and without longevity.

Why?

There was something very enticing about ambar being the root of amarilla, simply because it would explain something: In Italian, yellow is giallo, and in French, jaune. In German Gelb, in Dutch gheel. As I wrote above, jalne or jalde would have fit right in.

Why is Spanish so different? It would have been very enticing to say that the word has an Arabic root, because it would explain why they stopped using the more mainstream terms. How did Arabic change so much of Spanish, but somehow miss this word, which even though it is from Latin, is admittedly a stretch to connect to the color yellow?

Arabic Syncretism

The answer may be simple: The adoption of amarilla was likely caused by Arabic, but is not an Arabic color word. An Arabic noun for ill مَرَض (maraḍ), with the plural being أَمْرَاض (ʔamrāḍ). What if the phrase al-maraḍ and ‘emera became conflated as amarilla, as when someone becomes very ill, either word would equally work? 

I'm not sure how to describe the phenomenon. It’s not a metaphrase, a cognate, a loanword, or a calque. I wouldn’t even describe this as a faux-ami (false friend). It’s something else. I’m sure there is some word for it.

It reminds me of the concept of syncretism when dealing with philosophy or religion, and it feels like a form of fusion. Just like with oranges, we can can contrast the Spanish naranja which is borrowed unaltered from Arabic, but the French pomme d'orange works wholly within the existing language (pomme d'or, meaning golden fruit), with a wink and a nod to its foreign influence.