A Colorful Regency

What I was mulling over

Joanna here:  I was thinking about orange the other day. Not so much the delightful fruit, but “orange” as a color. I talked about this before in an earlier posting. Here.

What I was specifically mulling over was how folks in England had been  confronted with the color orange every day – flowers, sunsets, trees in the fall, ochre mud on their mukluks – from the day they hiked out of Doggerland and ended up in Britain. Somehow they didn’t have a special word for orange and apparently didn’t miss it,

In Sanskrit the orange fruit is a nāranja. Making its way through Arabic, Old Provencal, Old French and Middle English turned it into an orange and the color came from that in C14.

It wasn't as if they didn't HAVE orange

So what did they call that color before the Fourteenth Century? Apparently  geoluhread.  As in, "Wow. Love your geoluhread i-pod!"  Geoluhread would roughly translate as yellow-red and I am sure we are all grateful to Sanskrit for its intervention into what would have been a dismal shade with a long name.

Did folks think of orange as a distinct color, or was it just part of red? Roses, rubies, blood - were red. Pumpkins - also red.
When does a hue split off and become a different color?

Consider the dark red-brown color that gets called mahogany, dried blood, earth-toned, rust, and so on. Another language might have distinct words for for the color of tree trunks versus the color of dried oak leaves. To us, sienna and umber and burnt orange are different shades of brown.

So I was thinking about this and how we perceive colors we don’t have a name for. But fascinating though that may be, I turned my mind to the question of when certain color words found their way into English, with a bonus helping of "What words can I use in the Regency?"

There are lots of colors that didn't split off on their own - i.e. nobody noticed them as anything special - till the Victorians.

William Henry Perkin. We owe him mauve

Mauve: Word comes from the mallow flower. Latin and then French. It was first used as a color name in 1856 by William Henry Perkin to describe the color of his first brand, spanking new aniline dye.

Magenta: is another aniline dye name, this one from 1860, named in honor of the Battle of Magenta in Italy fought the year before.

 

 

Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maxentius
He might or might not have approved of the battle, but he would have loved the color

(The good guys won, by the way.) The town’s name traces back to Roman general and emperor Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maxentius (d. 312) who was also, overall, a good guy. Yeah, magenta.

Taupe:  Comes from Latin talpa meaning the small mammal of the family Talpidae. A mole. Taupe arrives in English in 1906, describing a fashionable color.

 

Not your average notebook keeper

Moleskin by the way, referred to the actual skin of moles (in the 1660s) and later to a thick, slightly fuzzy and gray fustian fabric (in 1803.) Now mostly nifty little notebooks. But it all dates back to the moles.

Aquamarine: The jewel word entered English in the 1590s via French or Provençal from Latin aqua marina "sea water."

Because aquamarine gem was ground to make oil paint, (in much the same way lapis lazuli was,) use of it as the specific color may date that far back. If our artist hero calls the heroine's eyes aquamarine in 1810, he may be referring to the gem or to the specialized paint pigment made from it because he's that kinda guy.

Aquamarine used to specifically mean a bluish-green color John Ruskin, 1846. The cards in Disney’s (1951) Alice in Wonderland (1865) could indeed have sung, “We’re painting the roses red. Not blue, not green, not aquamarine.”

Aqua by itself is later, in 1936.

Turquoise: Interestingly enough, the name of the stone makes no reference to its color. It comes from Old French pierre turqueise or "Turkish stone." The word entered English in the C14.
As a color name, though, it only dates to 1853.

Fuchsia: Named after the early C16 German botanist Leonhard Fuchs. (Fuchs means Fox in German.) It became a color name only in 1921.

Beige: From C13 Old French bege which  means "the natural color of raw wool and cotton."  Beige wandered into English from dialect French in 1858 describing a fine wool fabric. Beige didn’t graduate to being a color till 1891.

Lavender: doesn’t show up as a color till the 1840s so one can no longer dress an elderly aunt in it in 1819. Sorry.
Jade as a color,1865. Apricot as a color, 1906.

This is where all those Lands End cargo pants were born

And I come to Khaki which I've added largely because it so refreshingly does not come to English from Latin via French. 

Yes. It's another Victorian word. It's  Persian via Urdu as Khak meaning "dust." So now you know the color of Persian dust. 

Khaki hits English as a kind of cloth in 1857. Its first use as a color isn’t easy to pin down, but it’s after 1863.

Now you see why Heyer talks about puce rather than one of that whole slew of colors that hadn’t been born yet.

Puce: Is picked up in 1787, from French puce, meaning flea-color. Also flea.

We got the cousins of this word in Latin pucilem.  Also Sanskrit plusih, Greek psylla, Slavonic blucha, and Lithuanian blusa. “That it could be generally recognized as a color seems a testimony to our ancestors' intimacy with vermin.”

Lots of good insult words there.

But pink is fine for the Regency. So are lilac, russet, cerulean, azure, ruby, rose, violet, tan, amber ... you got just a whole ballroom of dresses right there.

I could ask, “What’s your favorite color?”

But I think it’s easier to consider "What color do you really hate?"

For me it’s asphalt road color. Ugly. Just ugly.

Why couldn't they make them pink?
Or a nice restful aquamarine?

Comments

[Kareni]

What a fascinating article, Jo!

Hmm, least favorite color... perhaps that putrid green that seems popular in hospitals and government buildings. (My favorite color is red.)

[Mary T]

Interesting post. I'm not fond of neon green or orange, but I don't think I actually hate any colors. It often depends on what the color is covering.

Years ago, one of my bosses treated all of the women in the office (six of us) to a trip to a salon where the professionals determined what colors looked best on us. It was a fun afternoon.

Turned out, I was a "winter." But the clothes and makeup I already had were perfect for that classification. So I didn't need to purchase a whole new wardrobe (smile). But I did learn why I didn't look good in pastels. Apparently I had a touch of red in my cheeks. I had never even noticed that before.

[Lil]

Colors I dislike? It's a toss-up between olive and mustard. I have to admit to vanity because the reason for my dislike is that they both look awful on me. I'm not too fond of either of them as edibles either, but I'm not sure if I dislike the flavor because of the color or the color because of the flavor.

[Sue McCormick]

Kareni beat me to the post: I was going to call it "offical green" or "schoohouse green." When I was young my favorite color was red/. I don't have a favorite color today.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Fascinating, Jo! I haven't researched the origins of color, but clearly I should. I remember the craze for classifying people's coloring by the seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. Summer and Winter tend to be cool colors, Spring and Autumn are warm tones. I once had my colors done and she said I was one of the truest Autumns she'd ever seen. This means I look good in colors people hate, like olive and mustard. *G* My favorite colors are dark reds like burgundy. Burgundy and gold look wonderful together.

[Robyn Aldridge]

That's terrific. I'm currently doing an extended Palette Effects 111 course with Blake Rudis. I was interested to find out that there are 2 colour wheels - one for painters and the other for digital purposes. They both overlap in some parts. However, names, apart from the likes of magenta, haven't entered the story.

[Binnie Syril Braunstein]

Great post, Jo. I've always loved colors. Out of the Binney and Smith crayon box, my favorite color was Prussian Blue. It speaks to me. In adult life, I love burgundy/maroon and blue reds. Also black. Goes with everything. I abhor beige, would hesitate to wear white, and I'm not much on yellow, although I once had an outfit that paired a black jacket with a wool butter/yellow sweater. That I liked.Also bronze. I tend to like vivid rather than pale colors. So, getting back to the regency period...did they never wear lavender, even if there was no name for it? What about gray, for half mourning? BTW - naranja is the Spanish word for orange.

[Binnie Syril Braunstein]

Jo - one more thing...you mentioned colors in gemstones. Given a choice, I'd take garnets over rubies.

[Sue McCormick]

Me too! I've ALWAYS loved garnets!

[Betty]

The color I hate is pea green purple. Makes me want to vomit.

[Kathy Lynn Emerson]

Tudor England had a host of color names, just not the ones we use today. My favorite is “dead Spaniard”

[Mary M.]

I tend to like all colors with a clear "tone." Those with a gray/grey underlay really turn me off, as I find them sickly looking. For background (walls), I like white to cream with plenty of bright or pastel punches. For clothing, my fave is yellow because it's hard to feel blue when you're wearing yellow!

[Barbara Monajem (@BarbaraMonajem)]

Red is my favorite color, but I find that as I age I am less enthusiastic about it. Perhaps it has become too energetic for me? (But a majority of my T-shirts are still red.)

I am not fond of grey in clothing and decorating. It's just too dreary. OTOH I'm very fond of dreary weather. A grey sky is just so soothing.

[Mary M.]

I looked this up and what fun! There's a whole Tudor color chart. My pick is "devil in the head," actually a pretty tone I'd say is between jade and turquoise. Black is called "mortal sin," which makes me wonder why it was worn in honor of the dead—seems like not the time to be associating sin with the deceased, as the soul was presumably being weighed for eternity.

[Christina Courtenay]

Fascinating post, Jo! And I had to go and look up 'dead Spaniard' I can't believe the Regency people didn't use lavender, how weird! But I suppose lilac was enough. I can't stand the colour beige (and agree with an IKEA advert that said "beige is not a colour, it's a state of mind") or any brown/mustard/sandy colours. Probably because they don't suit me and make me look really pale and sallow. (I'm a Winter on that colour scheme thing too.) Love primrose yellow, red, black and vivid blues/greens. As for orange - when I was little and living in Sweden, the word orange was used occasionally, but mostly we referred to it as "brandgul" which means "fire yellow". Kind of like that German word.

[Teresa Broderick]

I can't stand red. When I was young my mother was always dressing me in red and I just got so fed up of it. My favorite color is mauve or purple.

[Lil]

Mary Jo, my sister looks good in those colors too! That's one reason we could never share clothes. *G*

[Margot]

Interesting post. As a picture framer every company had different names for their mats and frames. Sometimes it was difficult to encourage the customer to complement the art being framed rather than match their home décor.
I do not like "puke green" or "squished caterpillar green." I also am not a fan of gray. As for clothing I love blue - any shade.
My daughter loved the Crayola colors and their names. When she went for her interview for Kindergarten the teacher held up a shade of red crayon and asked her what color this was. She studied it and finally told the teacher well it is either burnt orange or sienna. (All the teacher wanted to hear is "red")

[Joanne Bourne]

I think that green is supposed to be soothing.
(jo shrugs)

I understand they did a psychological experiment where they painted police holding cells pink.

They discovered the prisoners were less obstreperous.

From this I concluded pink holding cells startled and terrified hardened criminals who were convinced they'd gotten some questionable illegal drugs or wandered into an alternate reality

[Joanne Bourne]

That's cool.

There's a lot of psychological research into the color palette for makeup and clothing and how it makes us feel. Lots of artists figuring this out in portraits, too.

No reason science and art shouldn't come to our aid and be useful.

[Joanne Bourne]

The yellow-green point of the spectrum is not one of my favorites either. I'm a more bright, fresh lettuce green person. Or the deep brown-shadowed green of ferns.

[Joanne Bourne]

I keep thinking "official green" dates to some well-meaning person deciding

- people like being in the forests and fields,
- forests and fields are green
- therefore institutional walls should be green

but not really paying any attention to WHICH green.

I've always mentally referred to this as "Landlady green."

[Joanne Bourne]

The relationship between language perception and the words used to denote colors is kinda interesting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction_in_language

The thing linguists get up to ...

[Annette N]

Thanks for this interesting post.

Yellow and orange generally make me look like I have jaundice. Purple is not a color I like. But, generally, I love colors.

When I look out my window, I see wonderful colors every where I look. Isn't that a terrific thing?

I love any shade of blue or green, I love peach. I am very fair but there are several shades of red that I love to wear and they do not wash me out.

In fact, generally I love color.

I hope everyone is taking care and staying safe.

[Joanne Bourne]

Interesting that digital paint colors would be different from applied paints.

... maybe because colors as shown by the c omputer come to us with light shining behind them ...?

[Joanne Bourne]

A much warmer and more subtle gem ...

[Joanne Bourne]

I hate even hearing about it.

Though I will admit I'm quite fond of split pea soup.

I still maintain London fog isn't that color, but maybe it was in Vi ctorian times.

[Joanne Bourne]

I will rather indelicately bring up caca-dauphin from the court of Marie Antoinette.

[Joanne Bourne]

I am puzzled and dismayed by the current predilection for gray walls.

I have managed to avoid both naval service and prison, but not prison- or battleship- gray walls, alas.

[Joanne Bourne]

Dreary weather is good weather. Rain tends to bring out the introspective and creative in me.

I should probably go live on the Oregon coast.

Or possibly Mt. Waialeale on Kauai in Hawaii, which gets 460 inches of rain a year.
One of the rainiest spots on earth.

[Joanne Bourne]

I love that

"brandgul"

I will have to start calling oranges that. They will appreciate the compliment.

Oranges are somewhat jealous of red peppers who get all the good press.

[Joanne Bourne]

I like red as an energizing color. Wakes you up when you wear it.

And I appreciate that professional women can now use a red suit as power clothing. Makes women pop out of the crowd in serious important settings.

OTOH, do not don a red shirt while serving on the USS Enterprise.

[Joanne Bourne]

I have this theory that a good deal of education is teaching kids to give the expected answer instead of ... well ... the creative answer or the expert answer or anything else not in the book.

[Joanne Bourne]

How wonderful to live in a pla ce full of color.

I've been lucky enough to live in the tropics and the trees and flowers were always full of delight for me.

Now I'm more temperately based and I'm kinda in the process of throwing random rose bushes all over my front yard.

(This is accomplished over several years planting, you understand.)

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, more important than messing around in gardens.

[Kareni]

Your Enterprise comment had me laughing aloud, Jo. Thank you!

[Patricia Rice]

I think I'll pretend I never read this blog. I like colors. I like pretty colors. I do not like puce. Although it's good to know amber works because I really like it. So my heroines will wear colors they like and readers will just have to suck it up. Sorry.

[Vicki L]

Me Too....I read it, started laughing and mentally saw that red shirted crew member falling to the ground.

[Vicki L]

My color votes...no on institutional gray/green walls. Bleak and cloudy. Not too thrilled with avocado green. Definitely hate puky green. Though I do LOVE lots of green shades.

I think I'm more a specific shade of color hater than an all orange, green, etc. I do love clear colors and jewel toned colors.

Definitely fascinating how colors enhance or dull down neighboring colors. Art work, scrapbooking, painting, etc. Plus of course what works on/for each person.

That was very interesting about how the words for colors came about. Or the lack of a word to describe a color. I think "improper" use of color words would be unnoticeable in a regency book as long as the terms neon or glow in the dark are not used!

[Quantum]

I think a rainbow, where white light is split into its constituent colours, is one of the most beautiful sights in nature. I'm also intrigued at the vast range of colours perceived by mixing the seven constituents. Least fav might be the pale green often seen in public loos .... probably the cheapest emulsion!

[Karin]

After being locked out of this blog for a week, I'm thrilled to be able to comment again! My least favorite color is mustard yellow.
The one color that always confuses me when I see it in historicals, is primrose. What color is that? From the context in those books, it appears to be yellow, but I've never seen any yellow primroses. The most common ones are pink.

[Joanne Bourne]

I know. It always confused me too.

Primrose vulgaris (Common primrose) is most often pale yellow in the grassy fields and pastures of England and that's what people would have come across in the Regency.

Primroses are also white and pink in nature, but yellow is the expected shade.

It may be we more frequently see the non-yellow color variations in garden shops because they are snazzier.

[Joanne Bourne]

That green ... I suppose it is "pastel green" when you get right down to it ... is just a dreadful shade. It looks so unhealthy and unnatural.

I hang prisms in my windows and scatter rainbows all over the room. I am just hokey like that.

[Joanne Bourne]

I think historical authors need to know a bit generally about how English was used in the era they write in.

It's the same way a contemporary writer would be aware of differences in current spoken English.

The exact date of word origins -- this isn't going to matter to a reader.

[Joanne Bourne]

The whole question of how we see colors is an interesting one.

An artist might have 300 words to describe shades of blue and be able to distinguish one from the other consistently and precisely.

I have maybe 20 words.

Does this mean I "see" fewer colors? Remember fewer colors? Form concepts and opinions in a less subtle way about colors?

Hmmm ... I think I need another cup of tea.

[Eugenia Parrish]

I've always detested pink. When (where) I grew up, "pink" signified everything girlie, i.e. weak, silly, air-headed, etc. Now that I'm silver-haired, I've given in occasionally because silver hair does look nice with a certain shade of pink sweater. But I'm still inclined to pick soft earth colors to wrap myself in, like sienna, sky blue, forest green.

[Serena DuBois]

I had a Studebaker in the 70s that a friend called sh*t-brindle green, pretty close to the wall color mentioned above. I was in an accident and had to replace a fender which came in tan. So I gladly had the car repainted bright red with a silver roof to reflect the sun and nicknamed her Christmas. My favorite color is maroon, with purple being a close second.

[Serena DuBois]

I don't think it matters what words the author uses in description for colors, but perhaps it does if spoken by a character. I read a lot a Regencies [obviously since I'm here!], and like the language to reflect the era as much as possible, call it Georgette Geyer syndrome, since she started me on Regencies. She had a character, IIRC, with a moleskin vest. I always thought "poor moles" when I read it, little knowing about the possibility of a fuzzy tan-brown [?] material.

[Joanne Bourne]

Yep. Earth colors for the win.

I have the same reaction to pink. It seems girlie and I own almost nothing in that shade.

Pity, because I think it's flattering to pale skin types.

[Joanne Bourne]

I'll admit it. I'll admit it. I was puzzled by the use of "moleskin" for a vest. Also for the use of moleskin for little notebooks.

It wasn't till I looked up the history for this blog that I got it sorted out.

[Joanne Bourne]

Red was the right choice. Oh yes.