CSS "color" vs. "font-color"

I would think that one reason could be that the color is applied to things other than font. For example:

div {
    border: 1px solid;
    color: red;
}

Yields both a red font color and a red border.

Alternatively, it could just be that the W3C's CSS standards are completely backwards and nonsensical as evidenced elsewhere.

The same way Boston came up with its street plan. They followed the cow paths already there, and built houses where the streets weren't, and after a while it was too much trouble to change.