Many languages express ‘blue’ and ‘green’ under an umbrella term ‘grue’. To explain this variation, it has been suggested that changes in eye physiology, due to UV-light incidence, can lead to abnormalities in blue-green color perception which causes the color lexicon to adapt. Here, we apply advanced statistics on a set of 142 populations to model how different factors shape the presence of a specific term for blue. In addition, we examined if the ontogenetic effect of UV-light on color perception generates a negative selection pressure against inherited abnormal red-green perception. We found the presence of a specific term for blue was influenced by UV incidence as well as several additional factors, including cultural complexity. Moreover, there was evidence that UV incidence was negatively related to abnormal red-green color perception. These results demonstrate that variation in languages can only be understood in the context of their cultural, biological, and physical environments.

许多语言在统称“grue”下表达“蓝色”和“绿色”。为了解释这种变化，有人提出，由于紫外线的入射，眼睛生理学的变化会导致蓝绿色感知异常，从而导致颜色词典适应。在这里，我们对一组 142 个群体应用高级统计数据来模拟不同因素如何影响蓝色特定术语的存在。此外，我们检查了紫外线对颜色感知的个体发育影响是否会对遗传的异常红绿感知产生负选择压力。我们发现蓝色的特定术语的存在受到紫外线发生率以及包括文化复杂性在内的其他几个因素的影响。此外，有证据表明紫外线发生率与异常的红绿色感知呈负相关。