Humans have names, plants have names, animals have names, even terrifying diseases have names, so why shouldn’t colors? Crayola has always been great at coming up with creative names for its crayons, but now’s your chance to help give a unique name to all 16.7 million colors represented in the 24-bit color space.
Head on over to ColorNames.org, and your creativity may be rewarded with a color officially named by you. As with everything in life, there are some rules to follow: The name you come up with has to be descriptive; you can’t, for example, find a pasty shade of white and try to dub it “Andrew Liszewski.” The name also can’t be offensive, and it’s safe to assume the initiative isn’t open to corporate interests, so Coca-Cola Can red won’t pass muster either.
You can suggest a name for any of the 16.7 million colors on the spectrum, even ones that others have already submitted names for. The site allows visitors to cast votes on entries, and if two names are suggested for the same color, the one with more votes will win out. At the time of writing, 1,093,271 colors had been named, but so far the quality of the entries varies wildly.
If you have a hard time coming up with names (you’re the type who names their dog Spot, or just Dog) ColorNames.org also seems like it could be a great resource for other creative endeavors. Who wouldn’t want to check out bands like Fade To Gray or Oceanic Spitwad in concert?
