Rangi
The Swahili word for colour and for paint.
Also: rangi (Swahili)
Rangi is used across East Africa for both colour and paint. It is one of many Swahili words that arrived through centuries of Indian Ocean trade, and it comes from the same Persian source as the Hindi and Urdu rang. Swahili names several colours by comparison with familiar things: rangi ya machungwa, the colour of oranges, and rangi ya kijani, the colour of leaves. Only black, white and red have short, old words of their own. The Māori word rangi, meaning sky, looks the same but is unrelated.