When it comes to naming colors sometimes a perfect descriptor comes to mind almost instantaneously and sometimes I ponder possiblities for hours or days. Either way my thought is always on how well the name conveys the character of the color and how successfully it will link the color to something positive in the minds of the customer. You can image me raising an eyebrow when I see a well respected paint company like Farrow & Ball using names like
Dead Salmon, Arsenic, Monkey Puzzle and Clunch. This inquiring mind had to know why.
Learning about the origins of the name Dead Salmon took nothing more than a look at the Farrow & Ball website where it says that "The name comes from a painting bill for the library at Kedleston of
1805, though in fact analysis suggests that the colour is far closer to
No. 21 Ointment Pink. Dead Salmon as depicted here is 
rather more
'tired' in character than it
once was." I'm not certain how something can be any more "tired" than being dead but I understood their point.
Ointment Pink is a warm neutral color that does look slightly more "lively" than Dead Salmon.
It became clear that like the company itself the color names were steeped in tradition however even with all of my experience in color I still had had no idea what hue Puzzle Monkey or Clunch might be.
Clunch is described as "Neutral. As in the chalk stone building blocks used in East Anglia. A very versatile off-white." Hmm, are the building blocks themselves known as clunch? It turns out that its not the blocks themselves but the material they are made from; a very soft limestone that can be very fine and white similar to chalk and is sometimes found in chunks. Not sure exactly where it might be found or that I'd recognize a "very versatile off-white" chunk of clunch even if I did stumble across it but at least now I know the reason behind the name.
So why would a dark gray described as "A typical 19th century estate colour which has, like so many successful
colours, endured the generations" be called Monkey Puzzle? While I might have suspected the answer was rooted in nature I had no idea that Monkey Puzzle was a type of pine tree. Native to Chile and Argentina this conifer found its way into the rare plant collections of England and it is thought that the name came about in the 1880s when an Englishman commented that the tree would certainly be a puzzle for a monkey to climb; not that monkeys would have ever encountered this tree since I don't believe they inhabited the same native soil nor do I recall ever hearing about any monkeys swing through the trees of the UK. I have no idea who the gentleman was but he must have been someone important otherwise I'm not sure anyone would have repeated those words no less used them to name a tree.
I didn't have to see the paint chip to know that Arsenic was a name for green. Perhaps a name that wouldn't make it past the PR or marketing departments in most U.S. companies but one that historically has been associated with this color because arsenic was used in the manufacture of green pigments. Schweinfurt green was an emerald green used in a wallcovering that in its day was very fashionable yet very deadly color. The green pigment had a high arsenic content making it extremely poisonous but unfortunately many people who spent time in rooms covered in green wallpaper died of arsenic poisening before the problem was discovered. Not a bad color perhaps but certainly an unfortunate association.
While researching the color names I saw many comments about how witty the Farrow & Ball color names were and I had to wonder whether any of these writers would have said that had they understood the historic background of these seemingly clever names.
The one exception might be an observation that Angela Voulangas, a graphic designer from Brooklyn, NY shared on her blog a couple of weeks ago. She gave a very entertaining explanation of why a drab olive green is called Dauphin:
“Dauphin,” I realize in hindsight, is given a very elliptical explanation: An earth pigment colour in the early 18th century school of ‘drab’
First, “school of ‘drab’” is just so... perfect, so Edward Gorey... second, how does one get “Dauphin” for a khaki olive brown? After some investigation, I see perhaps F&B are too genteel to explain that the color ‘caca-dauphin’ became fashionable when the much-longed-for French crown prince was born to Marie Antoinette, in the 1780s. Ah, Dauphin's Poo.
Now that's witty.
We've called them hippies then yuppies and now boomers but one thing that hasn't changed is that there has rarely been a dull moment for the members of a generation that continues to reinvent themselves as they move into the second half of their lives.
Their energy for changing the world often waned as they climbed the corporate ladder but maturity has seemed to open their eyes to just how hollow success can feel if it doesn't add value to the world or support the greater good. 
Is this a revival of their technicolor dream? Well not quite. For Boomers that prefer to reinvent rather than redo simply copying the rainbow brights of the 60's would never cross their mind. While they still desire a full spectrum palette the colors are more refined, complex and personal. 
