Hacker News Reader

Comment by a_c | Hacker News Reader

Having known perhaps less than 20 colours for my whole life, this collection is eye popping. And the design of website is perfect too

View on HN

You can find plenty of colour terms in English too, e.g.

"chartreuse", "puce", "plum", " Burnt umber"

In addition to those, paint manufacturers have a name for every shade in their range, which might vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. Magnolia is well-known, but there are literally hundreds of others. We once painted a wall bon voyage. It was a light blue.

I remember painting my daughter's bedroom in A Whisper Of Rodeo Drive.

Which was also a light blue. Possibly light purple. Ish.

Where do they come up with these names?

> Where do they come up with these names?

The Marketing Department. Any resemblance to reality is purely coincidental.

A common favorite of Theatre artists is Rosco's RS0211 "Bastard Amber". "Bastard" colors are colors that have undertones of their complement.

I don't think one can draw a rigorous distinction between "well known and well-defined colour term" and "marketing department's name for a shade in the company range", but some are clearly at the "colour term" end of that continuum, and many are clearly at the marketing end.

I could have included "cherry blossom" in the list of English colour terms (In Japanese: Sakura) but a quick google shown that it refers to a range of related shades in English.

Technically, the first two are French, and umber is Latin, but that's how English works.

That being how English works, then technically, these are English words.

Evidence: any English dictionary.

idk...some of the text is quite hard to read on certain colors (ie Sakura)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com