New Names For Old Colors

If you have bought paint you know that there are some curious names for colors. Maybe the fumes make folks a little silly in the marketing department some days. Over the years my wife has and her friends have had a chuckle or three at the names given to nail polish colors. I'm all for a whimsy in marketing (I'm talking to you Revlon) but "Snow Bunny" and "Pretty in Papaya" is going a bridge too far.

Despite the best efforts of the paint and nail polish industrial complex there are some colors that exist in nature or in our invented worlds that are not named or improperly named. I think we can make some strides toward identifying these shades and attaching a truly accurate description to them.

For example, old computer equipment (in fact much hard plastic) from the 1980s and 1990s relied on a khaki or sand hue mixed into the polywhatsits. After three or four years of sunlight that color darkened to what I like to call Nicotine yellow. The name is an homage to the tint on the cotton filter end of a smoked cigarette. Now this color can occur in nature. Sometimes as when the surf is foaming just right at high tide the strands of beached foam left on the sand is Nicotine yellow.

I am sure there are more such as-yet-unnamed colors so help me out with your suggestions. In the meantime, try to spot examples of nicotine yellow this week.

jt