On the Insufficient Naming of Colors, or, Why Is Pink So Special?

     I realized the other day that for all the colors in the world there aren't very many that actually have names.  You have your primaries and your secondaries, your black and white and brown, and after that there are very few hues that have an actual name associated with them.  This wouldn't bother me if it wasn't for one sneaky little color: pink.  Why does pink get a name?  What makes light red so special that it gets its own title?  Light blue doesn't have a name.  Light green doesn't have a name.  But light red?  It's Pink.

     Now, maybe you're thinking, "Yeah, light green has a name, it's Light Green."  No.  That's not a name, that's a description.  It's a noun (green) and an adjective (light).  This is assuming that "green" is not itself an adjective, but that's a different story.  Or there's "Lime Green" or "Olive Green", which is also taking an existing noun and turning it into an adjective to describe another existing noun.  This is assuming the fruit was named first.  (Yes, Orange, we'll get to you later...) 

     I'll add that Gray and Tan were also lucky enough to get nomenclature, but since black and brown are kind of exceptional colors anyway I don't count those as much.  Then there's Lavender, which I'd say is pretty much accepted as a specific color, but it's also the name of a flower.  So lime could be a fruit, lavender could be a flower, but pink is pretty much a color and that's it.

     So where did pink come from?  If you add white to red you get pink.  So why can't your add white to blue and get schmink?  Or blite or whue or snoodleplatz?  I don't care what its actual name could have been, I'm just disappointed that you have to call it "light blue" or "sky blue" or "pale blue" and not "flinsk".  Just sayin.