# Why aren’t more color names used as surnames? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 26, 2021, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-aren-t-more-color-names-used-as-surnames/954978 "2021-11-26T15:02:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2021, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-aren-t-more-color-names-used-as-surnames/954978/42 "2021-11-27T17:46:51Z")
“susan puce” sounds nice. ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2021, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-aren-t-more-color-names-used-as-surnames/954978/43 "2021-11-27T19:26:55Z")
It is entirely possible that names were changed for the immigrants, but not by immigration officials. I saw the manifests from when my great-grandparents came over from Italy. Their name was spelled correctly on the manifest and in fact, I never found any documents with their name spelled incorrectly until their children were born in the US. I suspect that their children’s names were Anglicized on their birth certificates or when they started school and my GG parents didn’t know about the misspelling as they were illiterate ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2021, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-aren-t-more-color-names-used-as-surnames/954978/44 "2021-11-27T19:39:16Z")
Years ago, I read a book by Jeanne Heifetz called _When Blue Meant Yellow: How Colors Got Their Names_. Among other interesting facts, the author said that the surname “Blake” was used for people with black hair, and “Blaek” was used for blonds. “Blake” and “Blaek” were pronounced alike. In time, the latter spelling fell into disuse, meaning that someone with the family name “Blake” might have had an ancestor with either black or blond hair. ---
**Author:** ![nelliebly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nelliebly/32/5422_2.png) [@nelliebly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nelliebly)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2021, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-aren-t-more-color-names-used-as-surnames/954978/45 "2021-11-27T20:48:33Z")
My mother came through Ellis Island in 1931 with her mother and three of her sisters. Their names were very Italian. One of my aunts had a name difficult for many non-Italians to pronounce correctly and which has no English counterpart. None of their names were changed by officials. I have all their paperwork, and as you say, there are no forms that originated on Ellis Island. They all Americanized their first names shortly thereafter. The aunt with the “difficult” name was called a very “American” name. It was never officially changed. How would a bunch of impoverished Italian immigrants go about that? The names became official through common usage. Therefore, if they had emigrated back to Italy, they would not have had different official names. Maybe what happened to some people, such as those @RivkahChaya mentions, is that the Ellis Island officials had trouble pronouncing the names and somehow the immigrants thought the mispronunciations were their “new” names? Or maybe, as happened so often, it was the Americans that had difficulty pronouncing/remembering “foreign” names that led to the immigrants changing names by common usage. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2021, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-aren-t-more-color-names-used-as-surnames/954978/46 "2021-11-27T21:33:11Z")
Of course, most of this thread talks about colour names _in English_. If you look at words in French, Italian, Spanish and many other languages a lot of other surnames can be added. Not every language has as many names as English, and some research supposedly shows the intuitive result more common natural colours are more likely to have names in more tongues. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2021, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-aren-t-more-color-names-used-as-surnames/954978/47 "2021-11-27T21:35:39Z")
Do you know any Vietnamese named “Nguyen”? Most of them have long since given up trying to get honkies to pronounce it properly, and just say “Yen” or “Wen”. In a generation or two, they may anglicize the spelling as well. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2021, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-aren-t-more-color-names-used-as-surnames/954978/48 "2021-11-27T21:51:56Z")
There was a newscaster in Ohio named Jim Blue. ---
**Author:** ![gnarator](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gnarator/32/8266_2.png) [@gnarator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnarator)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2021, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-aren-t-more-color-names-used-as-surnames/954978/49 "2021-11-27T23:06:03Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > I was going to mention him! I have also personally known someone whose last name was Blue. Me too. In the small world department, he was mentioned further down thread, Walter Blue Bill James once mentioned the Royals were trying to get a “color” team together, with Frank White, Bud Black, and Vida Blue. They needed to sign Gary Gray and hire Dallas Green to manage ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2021, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-aren-t-more-color-names-used-as-surnames/954978/50 "2021-11-28T05:38:50Z")
I know, have known, or at least met, someone with nearly every primary and secondary color I can think of, except Yellow and Orange, but the variants of “Gold” abound, including my own maiden name. I don’t know anyone who is just plain Pink, but I knew a Pincker, and once met a “Pinking,” spelling unknown. No purples, but Violets, see below. But, let’s see: Karin Black (unrelated to the actress) and family Beth, Laura and Anne White (and parents), plus a Mrs. White who was a teacher Charlotte Blue, a friend’s “Aunt Charlotte” Jeffrey Browne, MD, and a couple of Browns, including a Daniel Brown, unrelated to the author Two different Greenberg families, and tons of Greenes, plus a Sam Green in a class in college A Redman, a Redding, a Reade, pronounced “Red,” although no straight-up Reds; several Reeds Lindsay Violet, as well as a family named Vilette; also, people named after other purple plants I’ve known a few other people whose names were things that were distinguished by color. I also knew a couple whose original names were Goldman and Brunwald. Brun = brown. Since gold and brown together makes the color Sienna, they decided when they got married to take that as their last name. The joke was they they were lucky they weren’t Wasserman and Erdman. (Both also common Jewish names, and Wasser is water, while Erd is earth, so their name would be Mud.) ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2021, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-aren-t-more-color-names-used-as-surnames/954978/51 "2021-11-28T20:23:36Z")
> [@doreen](#): > > It is entirely possible that names were changed for the immigrants, but not by immigration officials. I saw the manifests from when my great-grandparents came over from Italy. Their name was spelled correctly on the manifest and in fact, I never found any documents with their name spelled incorrectly until their children were born in the US. I suspect that their children’s names were Anglicized on their birth certificates or when they started school and my GG parents didn’t know about the misspelling as they were illiterate This sounds most reasonable to me. I knew that Ellis Island clerks (and clerks in other ports such as Baltimore, where my 5-great-grandfather Matej got through with both his Bohemian first and last names unaltered) didn’t change any names. But I didn’t realize, until I was researching this before my first response to @RivkahChaya that it simply wasn’t that immigration clerks _didn’t_ change names; it was that they _couldn’t_ - they only checked immigrants’ names against shipping manifests provided by the ship captain. They never wrote any names down, so couldn’t simply “Americanize” or shorten unwieldy surnames. I suspect you are correct. My 5-g grandfather did ultimately Americanize “Matej” to “Matthew”, but he kept his surname all his life. As did his descendants, until my grandfather decided to shed his “immigrant” name when he left Ohio to play baseball in Texas. And indeed, there are still people with his surname around today; almost every one of whom is related to me in some way. ---
**Author:** ![Sternvogel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Sternvogel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sternvogel)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2021, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-aren-t-more-color-names-used-as-surnames/954978/52 "2021-11-29T03:05:37Z")
[Lori Red](https://utahutes.com/news/1999/6/21/lori_red_named_wac_pacific_division_player_of_the_week.aspx) was a forward for the University of Utah’s women’s basketball team, while [Jantel Lavender](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jantel_Lavender) has had a long WNBA career after starring at Ohio State. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-aren-t-more-color-names-used-as-surnames/954978.md?page=2)