The cosmetic companies are even more experienced at coming up with names for HUNDREDS of colors of lipstick, blush, etc. And, of course, the names are meaningless. My favorite lipstick is by Mac and named Shhhh.

Another newspaper clipping from the past, entitiled The Man's Guide to Color

Yes but what delicious associations some of those names make! My first brush with the words goldenrod and periwinkle came from a Crayola box. Now I have a small cluster of goldenrod growing outside my window, and periwinkle vines meandering by the sidewalk. Did I pick the plants because the names were so comfortingly familiar? And can carnation, thistle and lavender be far behind?

Hmmm..I don't know..looking at it from that point of view, I tend to enjoy the creative side of actually assigning the names. It might be fun (for all of 10 minutes) to come up with something like "Hesitant Peach", "Deconstructed Birch", or "Dry Tuna" ..not that anyone would want to buy something the color of dry tuna... a different angle from the brainwashing of my color theory teacher: "There is no such color as indigo! There's blue and there is green blue and there is blue violet..and variations of those combinations." All I thought was "Come on!! I like calling that kind of blue 'Indigo!' Don't repress me, man!"
But, I do have to agree..it means nothing really..because my 'indigo' would be 'blue' or'purple' or 'deep transcendance' to others...

OT, sorry for this...I was struck by the font you used, I am not an artistic person, but I would love to know the name of the font used to name the colors, could you help me?
Thanks!

Thought-provoking, but knowing, as I do, how much You, Danny, appreciate words and how we can be affected by them, I'd say it's a little serious an approach for me. You're right, in p.o.v. but come on, it's fun to hear delicious thematic names! The color names are probably the least villainous tool of commerce. And tho I hated a job i once had in fashion manufacturing, I did enjoy paying paid to make up color names and felt rather powerful knowing i could attach a name to a color and hundreds of people across continents would have to call it that, like it or not. I don't think I hurt anyone or anything by doing it, but perhaps it was a "right" I had no right to.

No I was very unhappy one season when I was determined to call the company PINK "Dog-Tongue Pink" and my boss just wouldn't accept it! (sorry Frankie, I tried for YOU!)

(wish I could find my old reference papers from the US government where they actually published THE color names!)

When my daughter was just learning to read. We often stopped at the paint chip section of the hardware store. She would collect samples of her favorite colors and then have me read the names. She continued to re name them and it became like writing poetry making color associations with words. Her child like love of these crass commercial aspects of color have taught me to write and look beyond my adult preconceptions.
yesterday I collected a variety of green paint chips as I bought pea seeds and spread them on the floor of her room.

Danny - I teach writing to 7th and 8th graders. We talk a lot about the power of colors, how color references might affect a reader, and how we emotionally respond to colors around us. When I show them color swatches or they fingerpaint or color in class and they write about these, it isn't the color name that matters, but the associations they make: "This hot pink is my father's screaming when I come in late... It's my heart when I try to talk to Vanessa, this girl I like...It's the way the sky looked on the morning my grandma died. I used to love the morning." Our senses are alive to so much more than the traditional responses we assign. We just need to ask sometimes, and we receive amazing answers. -Lisa

hi. I'm Catherine White's daughter. (the one who adores paint chips) Although I'm fascinated by the process of giving colors a poetic association, I still appreciated your request for the world to pay attention to the hues of life. Thank you for this splendiferous post...

~Zoe Frederick

The thing that's always peeved me about color naming is when the names give no clue as to the general color at all! Looking at the swatches in this post, for example, how would one know that Carnegie, Cottage, and Riviera are shades of blue? When I hear Carnegie, I picture B&W photos of Andrew Carnegie in a black suit. Cottage could be blue or white or yellow or red. Is Riviera supposed to evoke the color of water? The sand? Palm trees? Whitewashed buildings?

These vague names are of particular issue being that I am partially color blind. Is that shirt blue or purple. Are those pants tan or green? More than once, I've chosen not to buy an article of clothing rather than guess or face the embarassment of asking...

It's not about description. It is about remembering. Pantone may have classified thousand of colors and your computer monitor may be able to display millions but there are an infinite number of colors. In fact, there are an infinite number in between any two Pantone colors. I have named many of the colors my company makes. The best names are not descriptive but memorable. You want them to stick in the mind. You want them to be remembered to the point that people will tell others about them by name. That is the marketing's ultimate goal.