Color Name Survey

Posted byRandall 369 Comments on Color Name Survey

I’d like your help for a color name survey!  The survey shows you colors, and you type a name (word or phrase) you might use for that color.  The names can be as broad or specific as you want.  The survey is here:

http://aram.xkcd.com/color/

My friend Finn (relsqui on #xkcd) wrote the frontend. I’m doing the analysis, though I won’t go too deeply into the details or purpose (to the extent that it has one) for now so as not to bias peoples’ answers.  Of course, RGB is a small and relative color space which varies depending on the device displaying it, so this survey has its limits, but it’s produced some cool data so far.

If any of  you want to help, you can fill out a few quick questions (don’t worry if you don’t know the answers—they’re highly optional and just help with calibration) and then come up with color names.  There’s no end to the survey; the more you answer, the better the data.  Thanks!

P.S. I’ve added a few much-requested prints and two new posters (Movie Narrative Charts and Gravity Wells) in the xkcd store.  The prints of Comic #150 (Grownups) are marked backordered right now while I replace a batch that was printed wrong, but they should be shipping again within a week.

369 replies on “Color Name Survey”

  1. Shouldn’t you be asking; “how many X-chromosomes do you have” instead of “Do you have a Y-chromosome”?

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  2. The test might go faster if the rectangle changed position. Every time I click ‘next’ I have to wait for the afterimage of the previous color to decay so that it doesn’t interfere with the one currently being presented to me.

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  3. @joeldi (silly answers theory)
    I’m sure I’m not the only one to answer C++ for my native language. So the silly answers started before the actual survey began.

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  5. Genetic sex is important because the pigments of the retina are sex-linked. Some women who are related to color-blind men (who have two of the three common photo-sensitive pigments) actually have the genetics for two pigments on each of their X chromosomes. This brings their total to four pigments (hence their descriptions as tetrachromats) and their range of visibly discernable colors to about 100 million as opposed to the 1 million seen by those with the regular three pigments.

    Sadly, men cannot (yet) have tetrachromacy. Although recent gene therapy research is hinting at the ability to introduce a third pigment into the retinae of color-blind (I think only red-green) individuals, so perhaps, color superpowers are on the way.

    Wow that got long.

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  7. @Psykechan: well since colorblind answers should form 4 identifiable sets sets (provided that: a)enough answers are given, and b) answers are tracked by session in addition to the set of parameters) this shouldn’t be that much of a problem.

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  9. I sincerely love the comment about the mars trilogy of Robinson. such a great trilogy. I encourage anyone who did not read it to do so. Then remember it was written over 15 years ago ….

    P.S.: I love the capchas ! mine was “bugles pranks” 😀

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  10. I hope you publish a list of the most curious names given to a colour. I’m sure there are going to be some funny names.

    captcha
    “man perverts”

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  11. So my theory is that is not a color blindness test, it’s a test to see how long a normal person will keep doing the same thing for. After the the 5th time I saw red, the 6th red was called “Red…………again”. I made it to about 60 colors before I felt like I was going insane.

    Sorry Randall, you may want to pull my whole survey from your pool if this really was a color blindness test 🙂

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  12. Do we have to include the name of an actual colour, or is it okay that I just said stuff like “Leprosy,” “Clayflesh,” and “England on a Good Day”?

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  13. Apparently Y-chromosomeless non-colorblind people who don’t know their monitor settings and speak English natively aren’t allowed to take the survey? I kept getting “strange response” errors. Is it a cookie thing or something? ‘Cos it doesn’t say to enable cookies anywhere.

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  14. There needs to be more greys and blues so that I can name them using WWII US Navy camo colour codes 😛

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  15. This is a profoundly interesting experiment, since the parts of your brain wired for ‘seeing’ and understanding colour, (your visual cortex in the occipital lobe), and the parts of your brain wired for communicating and verbalizing, (the visual cortex in the left temporal lobe) are not really wired for talking to each other. The human brain and eye can discern and remember large numbers of colours. The colour that apple is when it’s just ripe. The colour your toast is when it’s burned just enough that you throw it in the bin. The colour of the dead grass in winter. But normally the brain doesn’t label the colour. It thinks, “oh, that colour. Toast is overdone. Throw it in the bin.” Not, why that is a particularly interesting combination of reds, yellows, and blacks. More blacks and reds in this case, I think that is burnt sienna, or perhaps a dark umber.” It’s the same with tasting wine. You aren’t built to describe the flavours you taste in any particular food. But by building synaptic pathways you can certainly improve your skills. Just a thought on why there will be some people who can identify more easily specific gradations, while others will says ‘blue, green, brown’

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  17. @Patrick: I thought of that too, but when you move your eyes to the new position, the afterimage will still be in the center of your vision.

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  18. You know, for the sheer number of colors that we’re regularly exposed to in our daily lives, and the almost infinite possibilities, it’s kind of amazing that we don’t have clearer, more common, and more generally accepted names for colors. Or maybe our language just isn’t suited to describing colors. But given the current unfortunate state of affairs I find myself unable to name or even properly describe this color other than ‘Vaguely Red’ so I suppose that that will have to do. I won’t get all snooty and call it ‘Magenta’ because I honestly don’t know what ‘Magenta’ really means.

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  19. That was boring, I went to the other one at http://www.freimann.eu/domains/colornames.ch/wie/index.php and it was infinitely more exciting. You need more feedback, give me charts, data, tell me why I’m wrong, etc. etc.

    I’m disappointed you chose this as a survey to waste my time with as well since there are much more interesting, captivating, innovative ways to get original information from your readers. But you’ve just burned the bridge with this. I assume this elizabeth character has something to do with it

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  21. @joeldi – I can’t agree with you more. After about the fourth time seeing purple, my answers migrated from “periwinkle” to “plum” to “peacock.” Itis a great indicator of boredom haha.

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  22. Watch out for batman while you’re nearing the end of your study, i heard he got new brass knuckles…

    But yeah, Good luck 🙂 what’s the point of this anyways?

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  23. @Gwen: Aye, ’tis a cookie thing. Shame, too; I was interested in naming colors till I found it was a debugging exercise in disguise.

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  24. green – green – green – blue – green – red – red – red – blue …

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  25. I think it is a test on how long it takes for people to get bored and start writing silly things instead of colour names.

    Or it is some wicked method to define infinity…

    and no, I did not just spend 24 hours naming colours…

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  26. I knew it was just a survey, but I desperately wanted a payoff at the end indicating how AWESOME I was at naming colors and how many I got right. I’m interested in the results of the survey, whatever they may be.

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  30. Apparently, there are some people out there in the Intersphere that are upset because your ‘Do you have a Y chromosome’ question is insensitive or bigoted to people with CAIS, Klinfelter’s, De la Chappelle’s syndrome, etc. Apparently, it’s bigotry disguised as ‘bad science’.

    I would have thought the bigger complaint about bad science would be the fact that you can enter pretty much anything for the colour names, regardless of what colour is actually there, or that you don’t ask what kind of colour-blindness they have (or whether it might be from eye or brain damage).

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  31. Is this just a test to see how many we name before giving up? It would be interesting to see if the xkcd crowd is more obsessive than the general population…

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  32. I did this for about a half hour, and can’t help but feel this is actually a test to see how long someone will do something without any idea how much longer they have to do it for.

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  33. I’m not sure how useful it will be to you, but I’ve learned that in my own personal vocabulary, “barf” is a term to describe a color, and no other color word in my mind fits.

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  34. i’m with gummih… except my color gamut is slightly wider as i believe i detected several hues of puke green (yes that was me).

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  36. out of curiosity, could you tell me the purpose of this survey? this reminds me a lot of some concepts we went over in my linguistics class related to the dependence of thought on language – one major argument is that having color words in your language affects the way you perceive colors…….. just wondering – and when will the data be posted?

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  37. You might want to take a look at “Color categories in thought and language”, edited by C.L. Hardin and Luisa Maffi. It contains essays by various writers, scientists, and anthropologists and gives a pretty broad selection of ideas on the subject (particularly good is a chapter by John Lucy).

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  39. I love your comics. They are incredibly inspiring! I found your work after i’d been doodling in my notebook and i just fell in love with your art! They’re HILARIOUS and brilliantly sarcastic! It’s beyond superawesomecool. 😀 😀 I LOVE XKCD.

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  43. There was a site once that had a big graph of coloured data points along with the name a person had given that data-point. So you could look at all the “purples” and see the variation. I just can’t remember the URL.

    I second Bryce’s request that you open the data up. I’m working on a colour-related piece of code and would find it useful. open data ftw.

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  46. I absolutely love xkcd, but I have just come to the sobering realization that there has been absolutely no reference to Latin throughout it’s entire existence.

    Excuse me while I go cry.

    Nunc animus gravis habeo.

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  47. Technically, “RGB” on its own is a different definition than the defined device color spaces that are used to approximate the output gamut of monitors, digital displays, etc. RGB is the entire world of visible light, and we cut it down into usable and representative color spaces to create a standard that can be referenced and characterized.

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  48. As a color blind individual… I was all, “oooh, fun”… then “green… green… green… green… light green… light green, almost tea green… aqua… pinkish purple… purpleish pink… pink or gray… wait, does this end? f***!”

    I got through 59 of them before giving up. I hope I don’t skew the answers too much… I left long answers at times.

    But, thanks for this. My color blindness is also being applied to a book artist’s thesis work. I’m always glad when my genetic misstep helps others 😀

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  49. Almost as fun as google image labeler haha. No but after seeing some of the suggestions for color names in these comments I feel kind of ashamed. The most creative I got was probably “light blue.”

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