I just read your article entitled HOW MANY DIFFERENT COLORS ARE THERE?  It was very interesting.  I had no idea there were so many! 
 
Perhaps you can help me with a color problem.  I make jewelry and various crafts.  I've always loved color, and the varying shades and hues, and try to incorporate as many as possible into my various designs.  I have tried to learn as many colors as I could through 50 years of living.  And I like to be as accurate as I can when I describe to a customer exactly which color an item is that they are purchasing.  But in selling my items, it is rather difficult at times, especially on the computer with different monitors showing varying degrees of each, or on the phone when a customer wishes to place an order, to help them understand the color I'm selling or thinking of for a custom-made item.  Some colors can be described by saying, "Apple Red" or "Cotton Candy Pink", etc.  But showing them would be much easier.  So I have been on a quest, so to speak, for a book or fashion guide that might list all the colors created so far, or within the known human spectrum.  I thought that perhaps, with your knowledge of color, you might be able to steer me in the right direction.  Would you have any idea on where something like this might be found?

This is a very interesting question. There are so many different color names in use, many seemingly random, probably more every minute. When you look at furnishings or clothing in a mail-order catalog, many of the color names are not descriptive at all. For example, a recent Sundance catalog sells sweaters in "storm" (apparently a blue grey), shirts in "river" (apparently a dark indigo blue), and wooden storage units in "buttermilk" (a most unbuttermilk-like shade of green - spoiled buttermilk?).

My first impulse is to answer your question as a computer display designer. Here is a link to a chart showing the colors in the RGB system, such colors as "dim gray", "dodger blue", or "Navajo white". That scheme is obviously far too limited for your purposes, but still worth a glance. The RGB color system is essential for displaying your web pages the way you want them to look, but no use at all in dye mixing, because color mixing with it is additive, whereas color mixing with dyes, as with paints, is subtractive.

A large number of people grew up learning their colors from crayons, so it's somewhat useful to look at the names used by the largest crayon manufacturers. Crayola lists the history of each of their colors, including the ones that were removed from their system in 1990.

The way professional designers solve this problem, typically, is to buy a commercial system, such as the Pantone Matching System. This is rather expensive, well over $100 per year just for a set of color chips in the Pantone system. You cannot simply buy a used copy, because the colors are said to fade over time, so you are supposed to acquire a new set each year. A Pantone color chip set does not apply names to the colors, only numbers, but you will sometimes see color names defined by reference to the Pantone system. For example, check out the Pantone Fashion Color Predictions for next spring, 2007 [PDF link], illustrated in the picture to the left. They are, from top to bottom: Silver Peony, Tarragon, Opal Gray, Golden Apricot, Hollyhock (as though hollyhock flowers did not come in many different colors!), Green Sheen, Grapemist (a very ungrapelike blue), Café Crème, Strawberry Ice, and Sky Blue; the numbers used for these colors in the Pantone color chips are listed along with this year's names for them. Buying the latest Pantone updates on color predictions for the future can cost quite a lot of money, unfortunately. I find it maddening that the professionals in this field have so much power over what colors people use or wear, and yet, at the same time, this is widely agreed to be essential for anyone to be able to easily buy different pieces that work together in color, such as socks or a tie that match an outfit. [This illustration is used solely for the purposes of journalism, should be assumed to be inaccurately represented on your monitor, and does not imply any endorsement or approval of this image by the Pantone company.]

Alternatives to the Pantone color system include the Munsell color system and the Natural Color System (NCS). The Munsell system color chips appear to be even more expensive than the Pantone system, but look for a textbook called The New Munsell Student Color Set, by Jim Long and Joy Turner Luke. It lacks the color names but looks interesting nonetheless. Here is a link to a wonderful site about the NBS/IBCC Color System color system, with cross-listed color names and color chips. On that page is a list of letters of the alphabet, which each lead to lists of a vast number of different color names (e.g., see the list for color names beginning with B), with numbers for each; the numbers link to the pages on which the rational color names for these colors appear. It's an excellent system; it would be wonderful to be able to buy printed color cards for it, since the colors that appear on a monitor are not necessarily the same as the colors that will appear on a different monitor. Still, it's an excellent place to start. I think it might meet your needs.

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