2738: Ultraviolet and Ultramarine Jun 19, 2024

Ultraviolet, though not a color in the traditional sense, is named for being “beyond violet” on the color spectrum, though there are other colors colloquially named with ‘ultra-’. Meanwhile, ‘ultramarine’ is a form of blue, though not exactly a shade or hue, that you might think might mean ‘intensely sea-blue’. First of all, that meaning of ‘ultra-’ is fairly modern, but more to the point it was named for the material lapis lazuli, also known as ‘azure’ from the same root. It was procured primarily from Central Asia, so to Europeans it was “(azzurro) oltramarino”, or translated from Italian “(azure) from overseas”. The name stuck around and now applies to a particular hue, “ultramarine blue”, now virtually never made from the stone.