Storied Colors – a catalogue of named colors

susiecambria 136 points 28 comments June 17, 2026
storiedcolors.com · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (11 comments)

mmooss

> Most of what you can read about historical color on the web has been rewritten three or four times from the same Wikipedia paragraph, with the citations dropped along the way. What you are reading here is an attempt to put the citations back. That implies the entries also are based on the Wikipedia paragraph, though I think the author means they do their own research. The entries I looked at list several high-quality entries in a bibliography at the bottom but don't cite any of the text. Also, I don't know who wrote these - do they have any idea what they are talking about? Is this LLM output? If anonymity ever worked (almost never in scholarship), it may not work anymore due to LLMs.

hiccuphippo

There's no rebeccapurple.

saltyoutburst

For a word nerd exploration of how colours are defined in dictionaries, check out 'True Color: The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color' by Kory Stamper. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/237693038-true-color

jmatan

i do like the concept, though the blatantly claude-tinged "italicized word " visual language undermines the author's credibility w.r.t graphic design history imo

gchamonlive

Does the background colour have a history too?

mm263

Terrible AI prose

jgord

Their VanDyke Brown looks more like a Burnt Sienna to my eyes, but that might just be my screen. You may also enjoy the Chromatopia book : https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40554590-chromatopia The author produces a very nice range of oil colors under the Langridge brand in Melbourne, downunder... its nice to keep these artisanal practices alive. Would be handy to have the standard pigment codes. Ive been gradually moving away from using heavy metals such as Cadmiums. Haven't found the perfect red, although Napthol Red PR170 and Pyrrole "Ferrari" Red PR254 are pretty close to primary for mixing from a limited palette. Its really surprising how you can get gorgeous brick-red browns and deep purplish blacks from mixing a near primary red and primary blue.

nonethewiser

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GtF_zpJc_w

danielvaughn

The web has its own storied color, albeit a tragic one. Rebecca Purple is a named CSS color, which was added in tribute to Eric Meyer's daughter, who very sadly passed away at a young age. That shade was her favorite color. https://medium.com/@valgaze/the-hidden-purple-memorial-in-yo...

iberator

This webpage is nonsense. First example I saw was already wrong. COBALT BLUE is not known since 1830 but its ANCIENT. This webpage is some low effort english centric world and wrong and probably just AI slop.

lutusp

Why isn't my favorite color on the list: Unforeseeable Fuchsia?

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