Sources & credits
Our color catalog has two kinds of names, and we keep them apart.
- Registered names are the ones people have bought through this site. They appear in Browse, with a certificate and a Registry ID.
- Reference names (32,070 of them) come from the public color lists below. We show them on color pages and in our lists, always labelled with their source. Nobody registered them, we don't count them as registrations, and a HEX code with only a reference name can still be registered.
We dropped brand and trademark-style names (we don't want to suggest any company endorses or owns a color) and names that don't suit a gift site. When two lists use the same name, we keep the first one in the table order.
| Source | By | License | Names used |
|---|---|---|---|
| CSS named colors | W3C CSS Color Module | Public specification | 139 |
| xkcd color survey | Randall Munroe (xkcd) | CC0 1.0 (public domain) | 806 |
| Name that Color | Chirag Mehta | CC BY 2.5 | 1,351 |
| color-names | David Aerne and contributors | MIT | 29,774 |
License notices
Name that Color by Chirag Mehta is used under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license. Names were reformatted for display; the HEX values are unchanged.
xkcd color survey names are dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0. Thanks to Randall Munroe and the survey participants.
color-names by David Aerne is used under the MIT License:
MIT License Copyright (c) 2017 David Aerne Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
The Official Color Registry (OCR) is an independent, privately run registry. It is not a government agency or an international standards body, and registering a color name does not give you a trademark or ownership of the color itself.