Aqua (
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ...
for "
water
Water (chemical formula ) is an inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living organisms (in which it acts as ...
") is a variation of the color
cyan
Cyan () is the color between green and blue on the visible spectrum of light. It is evoked by light with a predominant wavelength between 490 and 520 nm, between the wavelengths of green and blue.
In the subtractive color system, or CMYK col ...
. The
normalized color coordinates
Normalization or normalisation refers to a process that makes something more normal or regular. Most commonly it refers to:
* Normalization (sociology) or social normalization, the process through which ideas and behaviors that may fall outside of ...
for the two
web colors
Web colors are colors used in Web design, displaying web pages on the World Wide Web, and the methods for describing and specifying those colors. Colors may be specified as an RGB color model, RGB triplet or in hexadecimal format (a ''hex triple ...
named aqua and cyan are identical. It was one of the three
secondary color
A secondary color is a color made by color mixing, mixing of two primary colors in a given color space.
Additive secondaries
Light (RGB)
For the human eye, good primary colors of light are red, green, and blue. Combining lights of these colo ...
s of the
RGB color model used on computer and television displays. In the
HSV color wheel aqua is precisely halfway between
blue
Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between violet and cyan on the spectrum of visible light. The eye perceives blue when ...
and
green
Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 Nanometre, nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by ...
. However, aqua is not the same as the
primary subtractive color named ''
process cyan'' used in printing.

The words "aqua" and "cyan" are used interchangeably in
computer graphics
Computer graphics deals with generating images with the aid of computers. Today, computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. A great deal ...
, and especially
web design
Web design encompasses many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites. The different areas of web design include web graphic design; user interface design (UI design); authoring, including standardised code a ...
, to refer to the
additive
Additive may refer to:
Mathematics
* Additive function, a function in number theory
* Additive map, a function that preserves the addition operation
* Additive set-functionn see Sigma additivity
* Additive category, a preadditive category with f ...
secondary color "cyan". Both colors are made exactly the same way on a computer screen, by combining blue and green light at equal and full intensity on a black screen. Traditionally, that color, defined as #00FFFF in
hex
Hex or HEX may refer to:
Magic
* Hex, a curse or supposed real and potentially supernaturally realized malicious wish
* Hex sign, a barn decoration originating in Pennsylvania Dutch regions of the United States
* Hex work, a Pennsylvania Dutch ...
, or (0,255,255) in
RGB
The RGB color model is an additive color model in which the red, green and blue primary colors of light are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors. The name of the model comes from the initials of the three additiv ...
. The #00FFFF color code is called "cyan" in the RGB color but the
X11 color names
In computing, on the X Window System, X11 color names are represented in a simple text file, which maps certain strings to RGB color values. It was traditionally shipped with every X11 installation, hence the name, and is usually located in ''< ...
introduced the alternative name "aqua" for #00FFFF in 1987. Later,
W3C
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working t ...
popularized the name by using it in the
named color palette of
HTML 3.2
The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScrip ...
specifications.
Pale aqua
Displayed in the right-hand column is the color pale aqua.
See also
*
Color of water
The color of water varies with the ambient conditions in which that water is present. While relatively small quantities of water appear to be colorless, pure water has a slight turquoise color that becomes deeper as the thickness of the obs ...
*
Lists of colors
These are the lists of colors;
* List of colors: A–F
* List of colors: G–M
* List of colors: N–Z
* List of colors (compact)
* List of colors by shade
* List of color palettes
* List of Crayola crayon colors
* List of RAL colors
* List ...
References
Shades of cyan
Shades of blue
Shades of green
Web colors
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