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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I dunno-- I am tone deaf-- i mean really bad-- but colors for me each color is pure and sings to me. I can track colors mentally-- many "colors" change depending on the light source-- incandesant/ floresent/natural daylight. but its not a problem for me.
It is one of the few characteristics that my mother really valued in me as a child. She was a seamstress and workded at home. she frequently sent me for buttons, thread and bindings and rarely questioned my matches. even when i brought home what looked to be a brown thread for a purplish fabric-- i was always right-- and as she stitched up the clothes, she had to admit it! I was grown before i realize not everyone could see colors with the same intensity i did.
When i first had a house, and need to patch a wall-- i amazed my husband by being able to "re-mix" a batch of paint to match the paint on the wall-- which is hard, since paint usually dries to a different color.
So to me, avacodo and misty fern are two very different colors... some of the hardest colors to name are shades of grey-- was it slate, or lead, or steel, or dove? biege and ecru are very different-- (natural wool and natural linen) I am very picky about colors, and hate when people "match" a blue red to a an orange red-- (it must be akin to some one with a "good ear" hearing me sing!)
we might be able to limit ourselves to 11 basic names for colors... but some colors, for me, are compounds-- a redish red orange (for a tomato, say) or a very redish blue red for a raspberry. raspberry red is very different than tomato red!
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veteran
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color names
What of the names given to the colors of the visible spectrum, which includes blue, indigo, and violet, three distinct colors which most people would lump together under "blue". This also makes my point that violet is akin to blue, not to red, to which purple is akin. In other words, purple is a reddish hue, violet is a bluish hue, but people keep using the term "purple" when they mean "violet".
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veteran
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heraldic colors
This introduces an interesting subject. The heraldic colors (more properly called "tinctures") have French names, of course, since the heraldic system was developed under the Normans, who spoke Norman French, even in England. The tinctures are:
argent -- originally silver, represented on paper as white
or -- originally gold, represented on paper as yellow
sable -- black
gules -- red, either scarlet or crimson
azure -- blue, usually cerulean
vert -- green, usually a fairly deep green, not light green
These are the standard tinctures; also possible, but rare, were
tenne -- ="tawny", orange
murrey -- deep purple (the color of a mulberry)
Anything represented in its natural color was described (blazoned) as "proper".
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Carpal Tunnel
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Delighted to learn my favorite colors are gules and murrey aka : Scarlet and Purple. On the 17th of March, tho, I shall be wearing vert!  wow
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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For those with interest in Chinese art there's a fascinating book on painting and the colors used, including their derivation in traditional painting called
"The Way of Chinese Painting - Its Ideas and Techniques With Selections From the Seventeenth Century 'Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting'" by Mai-Mai Sze.
My copy was purchased for me at Caves Book Co. 99 Chung Shan Rd N. (2) Taipai, China Tel 44754 in 1967. (Good luck!)
Another good one is : "Outlines of Chinese Symbolism & Art Motives" (illustrated) by C.A.S. Williams. Dover Publications, New York. Sub title : "An alphabetical compendium of antique legends and beliefs, as reflected in the manners and customs of the Chinese" I found the descriptions of the movements used in traditional dramas and the meanings of the gestures great fun and informative.
wow
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old hand
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old hand
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>It took me a while to find out what beige meant originally - the color of undyed wool.
Now, c'mon Bill. If that was really what it meant, don't you thing it would be pronounced baaaaah-ge?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Maybe if it had been spelled as you suggest,Fiberbabe, it wouldn't have gotten so far away from the original color.My computer is said to be "beige" colored, but I never saw a sheep like that, and I saw a lot of sheep because my wife raised them
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journeyman
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journeyman
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When i first had a house, and need to patch a wall-- i amazed my husband by being able to "re-mix" a batch of paint to match the paint on the wall-- which is hard, since paint usually dries to a different color. That is quite a skill, and usually takes quite a bit of work to train the eye... often never to be reached. I completely agree that the few names for colors oversimplifies. Though I also have to say that at least saying "green" gets people thinking in the right direction, when "chartreuse" could mean diddly to them. Sometimes any kind of communication is better than none at all. Yes, avacado and mist green are different colors. I know. It was to illustrate that the business of selling has made understanding color that much more difficult. They don't care if it's right, so long as it's different than the last name they picked, and sounds interesting.  Which is why I really resented the name changing in my art supplies. I don't consider "indian red" and "terra cotta" to be the same color, but they have decided it will be, for their product. I imagine "indian red" was changed for matters of sensitivity, but it should have been to a name that didn't already have a place elsewhere. And it means I can't change brands and expect to get the same color for the same name. Frustrating. (Even "pure" colors are on shaky ground, now that they are switching to synthetics to produce the color rather than the sometimes dangerous minerals that are traditional. You can't just buy supplies by their names any more...) But anyway, I too love the diversity of colors. On decorating, I used to get comments from family (and some cheeky paint department employees) that they didn't think the colour I chose would work... but they do. My family now waits till after to make any comment. Btw, my mother is a seamstress too.  Ali
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Btw, my mother is a seamstress too.
So is mine (well, not by profession, but as a consuming hobby)
How nice to find a common thread. (Hehe... that's my first pun, ever...) NOTE TO SELF: Late nights, physical exhaustion, kahlua and AWAD do not play well together
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enthusiast
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we might be able to limit ourselves to 11 basic names for colors
Well, the eleven basic colours of English are really a compromise list. I've found it varies much more by individual, but you can't put idiosyncrasies of perception into Roget's Thesaurus.
I have a twelfth basic colour, crimson: anything deep red, claret, burgundy, or plum is to me not red. It's crimson. (Hungarian also has a separate dark red.) I cannot see crimson as a kind of red. I have no idea why.
My family are artists (I'm not), and they have interesting variations. They all maintain that aqua/turquoise is a disinct basic colour, and so is cream/ochre. (Or possibly cream and ochre/tan were two extra colours, I can't remember.) My father also distinguishes scarlet and red, insisting that if something is scarlet it isn't red (= a deeper shade, but not my very deep crimson).
Then there's the different question of what you feel ought to be distinct basic colours. I call both light blue and dark blue "blue", but I'd be eminently happy using distinct terms, as they do in Russian (siniy and goluboy). So to a lesser extent with green, except that there are a lot of middle-range greens in nature to bind the light and dark ones.
I also feel it's wrong to lump light brownish shades such as tan or ochre with cardinal brown. (French distinguishes beige from marron IIRC -- the word brun isn't the real equivalent of 'brown' in all its English use; but I am open to correction by native speakers.) Nevertheless, I don't feel that tan names a basic colour. As far as names go, tan is a kind of brown, even though perceptually I want to elevate it to basic status.
But I don't feel this with aqua. I am happy to say an aqua thing is either blue or green or something intermediate: that is shades of blue gradually give way to shades of green.
I suspect anyone would come up with equally subtle complications once you examined them in detail.
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