It may well be that in the past, there was no separate word for yellow or orange, they were just considered shades of red. So people used 'red'. Then later, peo

It may well be that in the past, there was no separate word for yellow or orange, they were just considered shades of red. So people used 'red'. Then later, people felt enough need to create more nuanced terms. In a similar way, if I remember correctly, Apple used to be the English word for all fruit[1]. We later added specific words for more fruits, and Apple only remains as the name of a single fruit - however, we still have 'Pineapples', which gained the name when apple was a generic fruit moniker. Apparently it's common for blue and green to be clumped together - green (midori) is a surprisingly recent term in Japanese, so lots of green things are referred to as blue (aoi) because of traditional usage - including the green light on traffic lights, apparently.[2] [1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/apple#Etymology https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/apple#Etymology [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction_in_language#Japanese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction...