I always thought it was interesting that the Russian word for red is красный (krasnyy) and the words for beautiful are прекрасный (prekrasnyy) and красивый (krasivyj) (though I never understood the difference). So "Red Square" in Moscow is not "Red" as in the color or "Red" as in communism, it's "Beautiful Square".
Russian word "krasnyy" did mean "beautiful" before 14-16 centuries, and Old Russian language used other words for the hues of red (including the word derived from worms in other Slavic languages, discussed in other thread here). It is unclear how "krasnyy" came to mean "red". Some say it is because female beauty was associalted with blush, bu no one knows for sure.
Russian has a word for a color that is phonetically close to "red" (or even close to the french "rouge"), but it means what in English is called "ginger" and is used predominantly for hair color.
Also, learning French and English in my childhood that these languages do not have a special widely used word for "light blue" as in Russian.
Thanks for clarifying. I am generally not a good student of languages, so I don't typically get very far into any particular one to learn details like this.
But as for the "light blue" issue, what sort of shade are you referring to? Is it голубой (goluboj)? There is Azure--a Latin-root word that came to English through French--or Cyan--a word of Greek origin.
