At work we had to serve some court notices from the US on Indonesian firms. The form with the notices asked for descriptive details of the person receiving the notice. One of the details they asked for was skin colour (or color). As the notices were served by an Indonesian, we had a high old time assessing skin colours of people we knew and then trying to evolve a common vocabulary that would be reasonably meaningful for the recipient of the forms back in the US.

In English all I could think of was the obvious black, white, brown, yellow, olive, sallow, tanned.

Indonesian terms have white and black/dark, but otherwise seem to refer to fruit, e.g., ripe sawo.

Can anyone come up with more words to describe skin colour rather than race?

Bingley

Schoolgirl pink
Programmer's tan (white)
Dusky
Wan
Lobster
Peachy
Charcoal
Chocolate
Coffee
Palomino
Albino
Freckley
Rare
Medium
Well done

beached whale (something i can be likened to!)
pale
creamy
peaches and cream
peachy
rose
ruddy
olive (light olive, dark olive)
dusky
yellow (and high yellow)
beige
tawny
chocolate
umber
seina
mahagony
cafe au lait
coffee
coal black (or blue black)
ebony

i remember seeing in a dermatologist office, a set of tiles, with 56 colors.i think it was 56, it was a large, but manageable number-- any of our doctors out there familiar with these? since skin tone is created by melonin, the palest was 0 melonin, (albino) and the darkest was full saturation- i was tile number 4. (and my daughter is paler than i am, but not the pales person i have ever seen, non albino, so i guess she is 3,)i was in for a body scan, with skin as fair as mine, skin cancer is a concern.

Rouge, Kohl, tattoed, powderd and painted.

Mottled, piebald, freckled.

My makeup base is ivory, the palest one they make.

Dear Sparteye: And does ivory based make-up enhance your proverbial elephantine memory?

I'm afraid, Dr Bill, that it is not my memory which is elephantine.

makeup base is ivory

Along the same lines, my make-up base is porcelaine (it's a French brand, could you guess?) and others I've seen are: buff, sable, alabaster, amber, pastel, apricot and coral.

C'mon ladies and men, if you are that way inclined ... not that there's anything wrong with that drag out your foundation. The names of those are quite skin colour descriptive.

Hev