I am the first to admit that my mind is a little twisted, there is no denying it. So it didn’t surprise me when I was looking at paint samples the other day and had a thought. Who would look at a suffocating baby, a blue baby, and think “what a lovely color, I think I shall name it baby blue!” Or what artist was working in the slaughterhouse when he discovered a new tint of red, oxblood? I was struck at how creepy these names are when you actually put thought into it.
Then I realized that baby blue was one of my favorite crayons when I was little. I think they may have changed it to something more neutral like cornflower, perhaps for this reason. I approve of Robin’s Egg Blue for the sole fact that a robin’s egg is blue, if it was dead robin’s egg blue well that’s just nasty.
Then there are the politically correct crayons: peach instead of flesh and chestnut instead of Indian red. Why don’t they change Jungle green (sounds so wild and native) to the more tame Rainforest green? Then there are other colors that just don’t make sense: Razzmatazz, Timberwolf, and Purple Mountain’s Majesty. Let’s make it easy on all the kindergartners out there and call them what they are: raspberry, light grey and light purple. With some of the names it sounds like Crayola is marketing to the very restricted market of Fine Art PhDs (if that even exists)! Maybe it IS just me, but I can’t see Sally asking Billy the Paste Eater to pass the Raw Umber wax writing utensil. What the hell is raw umber anyway, it sounds like a blister…”I have this raw umber that just won’t go away.”
Did you know there are 8 different crayons with orange in the name (including yellow orange and orange yellow), 7 with yellow and 11 crayons with green and 17 with blue in the name (and yes there is a violet blue and a blue violet)? There are about 133 different ways to confuse a kid. No wonder they color outside the lines, they are under too much stress!!
In my opinion, which is all that matters, all of this fancy naming crap started with Mr. Indigo in ROYGBIV. No kid knows what indigo is…it’s dark blue, but ROYGBDBV doesn’t have the same ring to it, now does it?
