Why Color Names Are So Weird

“Drunk-Tank Pink.” What color do you picture?

Some names in this game are intuitive. Salmon. Sky Blue. You’re probably close. But a lot of them aren’t, and there’s usually a reason.

Most weird color names fall into one of a few buckets. Some are pigment names, like Cobalt Blue or Cadmium Yellow, which literally describe the mineral or chemical used to make the paint. Others are place names, Prussian Blue, Naples Yellow, named after where a pigment was first made or popularized. A lot are food references, because people are surprisingly good at anchoring color to what they ate. And plenty are just marketing, paint brands inventing names to make “medium beige” sound more interesting.

The hard part is that you’re not just guessing a color. You’re guessing what someone else, often a long time ago, decided the color looked like. That’s a different problem.

Next time a name throws you off, that’s why.