...to wonder why some colours are really common surnames (white/black/brown/green) and others not?

[Justbackfromnewwine]

Okay maybe I know a Pink but no reds/yellows/blues/oranges/purples.

Why is that I wonder?

Miss Turquoise! Ooh there's thingy Lavender of Dads Army

It's probably partly to do with when the words entered the language.

Medieval English doesn't have the words 'pink' or 'purple' or (I think) 'yellow', and while they knew about oranges, they didn't call them that and hadn't yet started using the word for the fruit to refer to the colour.

Though, I would think the name 'blake' might be from the Middle English 'blake' which actually means yellow.

Most colour-based surnames are a physical description of the person. Once upon a time, people were known only by their given names, so if there were two Johns in your village, you had to differentiate between them somehow.
Sometimes colour names came from locations (John Greenfield > John Green).

It’s a bit the same with animals and surnames. Why Calf and Lamb, but not Cow and Sheep? Why Duck and Chicken but not Turkey and Pheasant? Why Wolf and Lyon (ok stretching it a bit ) but not Tiger and Coyote?!

So random where these names came from many years ago, I always find family histories fascinating.

I was told that it was to hide your original name ifbitbhad political connections. For example I had a colour surname before marriage and i’m Scottish. I was told by a historian that during the Jacobite uprising many people concealed their ‘clan’ by adopting colours.

My maiden name was Green. Which meant the person who lives on the village green. That, according to some sources, was often the village idiot. When I got married, I thought, great, getting away from the village idiot association. Looked up married name ... “ often given as a joke to the village idiot”. Well, shit.

nyman. That's harsh!

Orange is probably too new to be a surname, pretty sure it was the last colour to get a name.

Do you know the thing about language affecting how you see colour? I think it is really fascinating. Apparently, different languages have different degrees of precision with which they differentiate between colours. So English can talk about red or pink, but some languages just have 'red' and 'pale red'. Or, some languages have loads of words for the shades between green and grey or green and blue. Apparently, when people are shown colour cards in similar shades and asked if they can see different colours, the people whose languages have more words for the colours, are also able to see more colours.

But then there's Jason Orange..

Maybe he was named after the fruit?

I always wondered if Jason Orange’s name was actually real though.

Isn't it just descriptive? You lived on a green, or you had brown hair/eyes/complexion - there are no obvious associations with being orange or pink (unless you're Trump).

OK Jason Orange disproves everything. When did we first see oranges in the UK? I feel a google coming on.

A lot of colour surnames must have been derived from hair colour, brown, black grey white, and in Scotland perhaps Reid and Reed.

The colour of your clothes often denoted your class, purple was used by royalty so didn't become a surname.

But Rose is quite a common surname, and I think that will be the colour.

I know a Michelle Orange

1560. So Jason's early ancestors were called something else. My money's on Trump.

I could be wrong, but I don't think in England purple was strongly enough associated with royalty to have had an impact on surnames at the time when surnames were forming.

My great uncle was an Orange...

hassled, oranges come into England way before 1560, but they're called naranges for centuries (and well into the 19th century, in some places).

That’s interesting LRD, but is that causation or correlation? Surely both the ability to differentiate shades and having more precise language to name them would both stem from a common cause - being exposed to more of those shades in your environment? I remember reading that an African tribal language had many more names for shades of brown/orange/yellow than we have in English, and a finer ability to distinguish these shades, but, green and blue were the same colour, and they had less skill in distinguishing those colours. Which makes sense if the culture develops in a location with less green/blue in the natural environment and more brown/orange/yellow.

I guess like Eskimo having more words for snow.

There have been Oranges in Britain since Domesday - named after the place in France, not the colour..

@LRDtheFeministDragon Rose is also a flower, and is on coats of arms.