Color Names

A handpicked list of 30222 unique color names from various sources and thousands of curated user submissions.

The names of color function like a thread attached to a frightfully slender needle, capable of stitching together our most delicate emotions and memories. When the needle hits the target, we feel either pleasure or empathy. Kenya Hara – White

About 📋

The aim of this project is to create a list of color names as large as possible, while keeping a good name quality. We've merged various lists, modified the names when there were duplicates with different hex values, and shifted the colors a bit when there were identical colors with different names.

Explore 🌍

Color Picker & Name Search Click the wheel to get name for a color, or just use the full text search.
Color Picker: Click the colored surface to change the color or type in a hex value below the name.
Color Picker II: Move your mouse and scroll to choose a color.
Name Search: full text search on the color list.
Color Distribution 3D view of all color names in different color spaces.
Twitter Bot: Posts random colors and lets you submit new ones.

Color Name Submission 💌

via form 🌈 / or twitter 🐦

Make sure to read the naming rules before you contribute!

Color Count: 30222 🎉

~0.18% of the RGB color space

Color distribution 🛰

When coming up with new color names, it is vital to know what spots in a certain color-space are crowded and where there is still room for new colors. For example: Our API returns the closest RGB color to a given HEX value. To avoid too many colors snapping to the same name, we aim to distribute the colors evenly in the color space: Visualization

Usage 📖

Node.js Installation 📦

Size Warning (1.15 MB): If you are doing this in the browser, consider using the public rest API

npm install color-name-list --save

or yarn add color-name-list

CDN 🌍

All Names 📚

JSON / JSON.min / CSV / YML / JS / XML / HTML / SCSS

Best of Names subset 🏆

JSON / JSON.min / CSV / YML / JS / XML / HTML / SCSS / CSS

API 🃏

To make it easier to access the names, we offer a free and public Rest API that allows you to access all the color names and names from other publicly available name lists. You can find the full API code and documentation in this repository.

API Example Call Usage

https://api.color.pizza/v1/?values=00f,f00,f00&list=bestOf

API Disclaimer

The API is free to use and has no limitations. But if your app/site is commercial and causes excessive traffic, I might contact you to become a sponsor.

Feel free to deploy it yourself, it is very easy to host/deploy on heroku and has no dependencies Color-Name-API

Usage JS ⌨

Size Warning (1.15 MB): If you are doing this in the browser, consider using the public rest API

Exact Color

import namedColors from 'color-name-list';

let someColor = namedColors.find(color => color.hex === '#ffffff');
console.log(someColor.name); // => white

let someNamedColor = namedColors.find(color => color.name === 'Eigengrau')
console.log(someColor.hex); // => #16161d

Closest Named Color

Since there are 16777216 possible RGB colors, you might use a library such as nearest-color or ClosestVector to help you find the the closest named color.

import nearestColor from 'nearest-color';
import colorNameList from 'color-name-list';

// nearestColor need objects {name => hex} as input
const colors = colorNameList.reduce((o, { name, hex }) => Object.assign(o, { [name]: hex }), {});

const nearest = nearestColor.from(colors);

// get closest named color
nearest('#f1c1d1'); // => Fairy Tale

Note: If you are looking for something visually more accurate, you could use DeltaE or use the above snippet, but using ciecam02 instead of RGB.

Building 🔨

npm install && npm run build

See package.json for more.

Sources 🗒

Sources: Names 📇

Thousands of user submissions Twitter / Google Docs / Github
Wikipedia list of named colors (2018-02-23)
Wada Sanzo's list of named colors
CSS/HTML color names
Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours
ntc.js
xkcd color survey list
htmlcsscolor.com
OSX Crayons
Crayola crayon
Japanese Twelve Level Cap and Rank System colors
Thailand weekday colors
Chinese heavenly creatures colors
Military Paint
Olympian god colors
Model Color Paints: Vallejo
Fictional Colors (2018-05-09)
Non English Transliterations: Japanese , Mandarin , Hindi , Persian , Russian , Māori
Multiple paint, print, nail polish, model paint color lists
Curated Machine Learning names from Matt DesLauriers and Nathan Kjer
Team Fortress 2 paint colors

Contributors 🦑

meodai Initiator, maintainer, name creator &, tooling
Nirazul Name creator & tooling
Bathos Tooling
Metafizzy Logo 💖

Costs & Sponsors

Project Costs USD

One-Time

Item	Expenditure
Logo by Metafizzy	800

Periodic

Item	Expenditure
Color Name API Server	264.60/year
color.pizza domain name	36.16/year
Cloudflare PRO Plan	240/year

Color Namers

Verena the naming overlord , Jess the name wizard , Syl , Stephanie Stutz , Simbiasamba , Jason Wilson , Inês João , Nick Niles , Qwhex , Ichatdelune , basgys , Shelina S. , Trevor Elia , cheesits456 , Sandhya Subram , BerylBucket , Jimmy Fitzback , TLZ , DarthTorus , Carrion , BlueChaos , nachtfunke

Disclaimer 👮🏾‍

In an effort to create a more inclusive and respectful environment, we strive to remove all offensive and racist names, as well as protected brand names, from our list. While we do our best to screen out such names, some may still slip through. If you come across any such names, please let us know so that we can remove them promptly.

fabstei/color-names