Pipette

Color Names

In addition to the well-known color names like for example blue, yellow, green, red, black and white, there are some other lesser-known color names, which apply, for example, in product descriptions and in the advertising or in the clothing industry. The advantage of these definitions is, that you do not have to recognize the strange and unhandy numerical color values such as the values from the RGB color model.

In the following we would like to see various systems for naming colors. We first start with the 16 colors from the early HTML respectively VGA standard and then look at the 140 colors that are defined in the CSS 3 specification. This is followed by further color lists from the context of programming languages ​​and system color palettes as well as a list of the Media Color Names specified by the Printer Working Group:

• HTML and VGA Basic Color Keywords
• CSS 3 Extended Color Keywords
• Color Designations of various Programming Languages
• System Color Palettes
• Media Color Names of the Printer Working Group

HTML and VGA Basic Color Keywords

The following 16 color definitions are among the first color names that could be used within HTML documents. This means that the English color names can be used interchangeably in HTML documents and CSS style sheets instead of their hexadecimal notation (column HEX) for assigning colors.

Originally, these 16 colors were defined in the Microsoft Windows Default 16-Color Palette, which was used for example, for icons with 16 colors or for the VGA text mode (more on this in the section about system color palettes). For a long time, Microsoft Paint also reminded its users of this color selection, because the Paint color palette predefined these colors as the first suggestions until Windows XP.

The CSS1 specification from 1996 did not yet contain any definitions of the RGB values ​​for these colors (quote: "their RGB values ​​are not defined in this specification"), but instead referred to the "Windows VGA palette" in section 6.3 ("Color Units") and labeled the color names as a "suggested list of keyword color names". However, the HTML 3.2 specification, published shortly afterwards in early 1997, already contained a full list of these color names including the RGB codes and color fields in section 6.5 ("Colors"). This list was repeated in the HTML 4.01 specification in 1999. The CSS2 specification from 2011 also finally contained a complete list of these names in section 4.3.6, including their definitions of the RGB values ​​also mentioned here. Today's CSS3 specification still lists these 16 names under the name "Basic Color Keywords", thus separating them from the "Extended Color Keywords", which we will look at in the next section of this article.

The translations (that can be found in the columns "German", "Spanish" and "French") of the English color names (column "English") are for information purposes only. Only the English color names may be used in HTML documents, but it does not matter whether they are written in upper or lower case letters.

CSS 3 Extended Color Keywords

With the introduction of the CSS 3 standard, also the color palette has been significantly expanded. Now, also the following 140 colors (again only the English names) can be used in the Cascading Style Sheets alternatively to their hexadecimal notation. Also with these names, again, the uppercase and lowercase writing does not matter.

The 16 colors from the older HTML 3.2 / CSS 2 respectively VGA standard were adopted and are also included in the newer CSS 3 standard with their same names, so that this color extension is completely backwards compatible. In the CSS Color Module Level 3, the old color palette can be found in section 4.1 under the name "Basic Color Keywords", while the new color names are defined in section 4.3 under the name "Extended Color Keywords". However, the Extended Color Keywords also contain all 16 former color names additionally again.

The new CSS color terms originated in a color list that was initially developed for the X11 Windows System (Unix software for creating graphical user interfaces). The first version of this color list was published in 1989. This list was subsequently expanded over the years and finally adopted into the CSS standard with only a few modifications. The decision to adopt the X11 color names was also supported by the fact that some browsers originally developed for the X Window System, such as the Netscape Navigator or the Mosaic Browser, already supported that color list as X applications.

Finally, it should also be noted that instead of "Gray" you can also write "Grey" (this also applies to color names such as LightGray, DarkGray, SlateGray, LightSlateGray or DimGray) and the colors Aqua and Cyan as well as Magenta and Fuchsia are identical. Of course, the browser used must also support the CSS 3 standard if the colors are to be displayed correctly. However, this should now be the case for all common browsers today.

Color Designations of various Programming Languages

Besides CSS and HTML, also many other programming and markup languages ​​such as Java, Pascal (FreePascal, Lazarus, Delphi), VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) or TeX/LaTex as well as the application framework and GUI toolkit Qt simplify the selection of colors using color names in the form of predefined constants that can be used when programming in the respective language so that the color in question does not have to be defined using its numerical color value but can be defined by just using a name that is easier to remember. In addition, the following table contains - if available - the color equivalent from the W3C CSS3 standard in the colum "CSS" (see last section) as well as the equivalent from the "Media Color Names" color palette of the Printer Working Group in the column "PWG" (see the section after next).

In the languages ​​mentioned, the following names and color constants are known for the 30 colors listed:

As you can see, the colors black and white as well as many of the "simple" RGB and basic colors such as red, blue, yellow, fuchsia/magenta or cyan/aqua are defined in the same way in almost all contexts. However, there are differences with the more mixed colors such as pink and orange and especially in the green and gray tones (more on this in the linked article).

In addition to the fact that color definitions may vary from one another, when using color constants in programming, it is important to note that some programming languages also ​​provide color constants that do not represent a fixed color but are dependent on the context:

For example, the color constants shown in the table for the programming language ​​Pascal respectively FreePascal, which can be used in Delphi and Lazarus and which are fixed for a certain color, should not be confused with the color constants for system colors that are also available in these environments and can contain different color values ​​depending on the system, version and settings. Examples from this category include the standard background color of windows (clWindow), the standard color for text in windows (clWindowText), the background color for text markings (clHighlight), the font color of text markings (clHighlightText), the standard button colors (clBtnFace and clBtnText) or clDefault as a universal standard color for any controls or contexts. These constants can be used to adapt your own application to the color scheme of the operating system and otherwise have nothing to do with predefined color names.

It should also be mentioned that many programming languages ​​in the meantime also provide the color names from the CSS3 standard presented in the second section of this article as color constants. For example, starting with FreePascal 3.2.0, the CSS3 W3C Colors can be made available as constants in Lazarus via the System.Uitypes unit or in Tex/LaTeX by loading the "svgnames" package via \usepackage[svgnames]{xcolor}. In LaTeX, however, unlike the CSS standard, the names are case-sensitive and can therefore only be used in their original defined writing.

System Color Palettes

Earlier operating systems from the era of 8-bit displays, which with their 8-bit color depth could only display 256 different colors simultaneously, often provided partially predefined color palettes that could easily be used in the original or a modified form.

The following table shows three of these color palettes: The Microsoft Windows and IBM OS/2 Default 16-Color Palette in the "WIN-16" column, the Microsoft Windows Default 20-Color Palette in the "WIN-20" column as well as the Apple Macintosh Default 16-Color Palette in the column "MAC-16". In addition to the color values ​​and color names, the table shows the indices of the individual colors within the respective color palette. Free indices could be used for defining own colors as an alternative to overwrite the existing indices.

The Windows 16 palette contains all the colors we already know from the section about the HTML and VGA basic color keywords. This palette is the default Windows palette for 16-color icons and is mainly backwards compatible with the colors of the early CGA, EGA and VGA text modes, but arranges the colors in a different order.

The Windows 20 palette extends these 16 colors by four additional colors: "Money Green", "Sky Blue", "Cream" and "Medium Gray". For this reason, these four colors are also defined as color constants in the Pascal programming language, as we saw in the last section.

In addition to this extension, also some of the color names as well as the indices of some of the colors were changed. The darker colors were largely given the names of the lighter colors with an addition of "Dark" (so that only the last seven colors of the old color palette kept their old names) and the indices were divided so that the first ten and the last ten of the 256 available indices were used (so that only the first eight colors kept their original index).

The Apple Macintosh color palette, which was introduced in 1987 with the Macintosh II and the System 4.1, differs greatly from the two Windows color palettes. While Windows mainly defines colors with very even RGB color channels such as 00, 80 or FF, which made the display on earlier monitors that did not yet support very much colors easier and more uniform, the Apple Macintosh color palette defines "nicer" and more "natural" looking colors using sinuous values ​​for the color channels. Only black, white and the shades of gray are defined by even color channels and thus resemble the Windows color palettes with the exception of "Medium Gray" and "Dark Gray", which are defined somewhat darker than Windows does.

Media Color Names of the Printer Working Group

Another system for naming colors are the so-called Media Color Names, which the Printer Working Group (PWG) specifies in the standard PWG 5101.1. Based on 20 basic colors, which can be seen in the column "Default" in the following table, all colors (with the exception of black and white) are defined in addition to their basic variant in the lighter versions "Clear" and "Light" as well as in an darker variant "Dark":

In this system, the default color has the color name without any additional prefix, while the three additional variants are each called "variant name + color name." For example, the following names result for the green variations that can be seen in the first row of the table: The base color #008000 is simply called "Green" while the variant #80C080 is called "Clear Green", #90EE90 is called "Light Green" and the color #006400 is called "Dark Green".

However, the approach of clear, light and dark color variations sometimes leads to duplications, especially in the area of ​​gray values ​​(although the definition of some variations such as "Light White", "Dark White" or "Dark Black" has already been omitted here). For example, the colors "White" and "Clear White" as well as "Silver" and "Clear Silver" are identical, while the color with the RGB code #808080 even results for three times from the variations as "Gray", "Clear Black" and "Light Black".

Other Color Charts

Lightness and Saturation | Lightness | Saturation | Shades of Gray | Color Names | Web Colors