Semantic Context Matters: Analysis of Color Names Across Domains

Adilet Yerkin, Elnara Kadyrgali, Malika Ziyada, Nuray Toganas, Muragul Muratbekova, Ayan Igali, Aruzhan Sabitkyzy, Pakizar Shamoi

Color naming is influenced not only by physical color values but also by the semantic context in which colors are used. This paper investigates context-dependent color naming by mapping color-name datasets from Cosmetics, Crayola, and Car-color vocabularies onto the 86 fuzzy color categories of the COLIBRI color model. Contextual variation is analyzed using category coverage, Shannon entropy, and maximum lift. The results show that the three contexts occupy the COLIBRI color space differently: Cosmetics covers 48 of 86 fuzzy categories, Crayola covers 50, and Car colors cover 40. The results demonstrated that Crayola provides the broadest and most balanced use of the fuzzy color space, Cosmetics is mainly concentrated around warm-tone regions, and Car colors are more specialized around blue and achromatic regions. These findings show that color naming cannot be fully explained by numerical color similarity alone and that semantic context plays an important role in human color interpretation. The proposed framework supports the development of context-aware color models for design analytics, product search, recommendation systems, and human-centered artificial intelligence.