Abstract: As a special kind, the research on the color term leads to a clearer understanding of the relationship between language and cognition. This article presented a summary of recent research on the nature of color terms and color categories, specially introduced two different theories: color naming universality and linguistic relativity hypothesis. Finally, the future trends and approaches in this field are predicted and new research approaches are provided, including research on association meaning of color terms, color terms and nationality, processing on multiple color terms, synaesthesia, concept structure of color terms.

Key words: color terms, color cognition, relation.