Put that creative writing degree to the test by helping name every color on the internet.
At some point in every creative writing major’s young life, they will find themselves googling some variation of the question: Is coming up with fun names for stuff a job? (Personally, I really wanted to be the person who got to name all the nail polish, but apparently the CEO of Essie does that herself, so one must possess other skills and clout to land that gig.)
But I’m pleased to say that I have found an alternative that allows me to live out my color-naming dreams. Let me introduce you to what is perhaps the most fun website on the internet (aside from this one). It’s colornames.org, “a collaborative effort to name every color in the RGB/web space.” So far, they’ve got 2,578,846 names down, only 15.4% of all the possible colors. I might or might not have spent several hours this weekend contributing to this project.
Here’s what I’ve learned: you’re not as unique as you think. A Sophisticated Grape, for example, was already taken for a purple-gray color I tried to name. (A Very Sophisticated Grape, however, was not!)
If you’re stuck, I highly recommend going over to the Latest Submissions page, where you can vote on color names and see how weird/stupid/poetic other people get. Some recent favorites…
