colorful surnames

[rone]

In English, we have Black, White, Brown, and Green.  There are many people in Asia and of Asian descent with the surname Tan, but that's just a coincidence.  Vermeil is a bright shade of red in French, Purpura refers to a dye from a mollusc.  What other surnames am i missing?

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Gold and Silver, and their equivalents in many other languages.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...Gray and Grey. Also Gris.

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Braun. Schwartz. Herr Gelb und Frau Blau? Goldfarb. Gold, for that matter, and Silver. And I have an old friend from high school, Rob Transparent.

Not to mention Professor Plum and Colonel Mustard!

[haineux.livejournal.com]

http://www.thealmightyguru.com/Reviews/Clue/Clue-Characters.html

[stoneself.livejournal.com]

kim = gold
rose

[reddragdiva]

The surname Blue does exist in English-speaking countries, though it's rare.

[doctroid.livejournal.com]

There's a musician in our area named Peter Blue, though I can't swear it's not a pseudonym.

[reddragdiva]

I'm thinking of an old girlfriend. Her brother's surname was Hutchinson-Blue, I think he thought just "Blue" was silly.

[mrbalihai.livejournal.com]

I know at least one person with the surname Redd.

[opadit.livejournal.com]

beelavender is her honest-to-goodness birth name.

[kerri9494.livejournal.com]

I know at least one person with each of the following last names.

Pink.
Violet.
Umber.
Teal.
Rust.

I think I've heard of someone named the following.

Russet.
Jade? Pine? OK, that's a stretch.

[cheesetruck.livejournal.com]

Finnish names tend to be things that are named after objects; I have a friend 'Mikko Sivulainen' which derives from 'Sivu' meaning 'page.' As in 'page of a book.'

The colors in Finnish are, well, ok - brown and black are smaller words (musta = black, ruskea = brown) - and some things I've read indicate that Finns have not traditionally distinguished colors far from the primaries - so what we'd consider green some Finns may consider blue. Vihrea (green) is used by everyone _I_ know, however; so I don't know that this holds true.

Nonetheless, I know no one with a last name indicating any color, and a quick search on google for "Mikko Valkoinen" (Mike White) turns up nothing, same with Mikko Musta, and Mikko Punainen.

I'm fairly secure in saying there aren't many, if any, Finns with colors as last names.

(Mikko is a very popular first name, which is why I used it in the search.)

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I wonder if we can profile this by language? Color-related names seem to be particularly common in English and German, less so in some other languages.

[cheesetruck.livejournal.com]

Or language group - Indo-European (and various subareas - Romance, Germanic, and I'm afraid I don't know what groupings the Hindi or Farsi lanaguages would be in) vs. Finno-Urgic - and whether this then extends to just 'Western' languages or if it holds for others.

I'll ask a Hungarian friend if it's common there, and see if any Dutch/Norwegian/Svensk folks have any idea about it.

Norwegian friend reports that he's never seen a color used as a last name ALONE, followed by a discussion of 'Brunes' and whether that's really a color or not (: ('Brown' 'small peninsula' (which I am thinking there is a Finnish word 'lahti' which works here but not an English word.))

[paracelsvs.livejournal.com]

Swedish has "Grön" as a surname, at least. "Röd" makes me think of Viking names. It's not really used any longer as far as I know. "Svart" (black) seems to be another archaic name no longer used.

Can't really think of any others, though.

[joepro.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of a book I just read. It's called "Hop on Pop."

"Mr. Brown, Mrs. Brown. Mr. Brown is upside down. Pup up. Brown down. Pup is down, where is Brown? Mr. Brown is out of town. Back, Black. Brown came back. Brown came back with Mr. Black."

It's a really good book.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

NO
PAT
NO

Don't sit on that.

[zadcat.livejournal.com]

Some of the color names used in English in North America are translations. "Blue" is probably originally Blau or Blaukopf or some such. People called Weiss or Schwartz would translate to White or Black.

In French there's Leblanc, Leroux (red hair in French is roux, not rouge), Lebrun, Lenoir, Lazure. Nobody is called "Vert" or "Levert" but green comes into names like Chenevert (green oak) or Laverdure (the greenery). A lot of Quebec Francophones migrated down into New England and some may have translated their names too.

[urbeatle.livejournal.com]

Duh, mine. Laviolette.

[urbeatle.livejournal.com]

Although, strictly speaking, the color is named after the plant.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

This thread is starting to remind me of Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons.

[racerxmachina.livejournal.com]

Japanese folks came to the surname accessory late in the trend. Noble families were allowed to have them, peasants weren't. Thus, when the populace at large were made to get surnames during the Meiji restoration, they tended to pick names descriptive of their geographic location (hence a lot of folks with surnames of XXX-field or YYY-village. Yoshida: Goodfield. Kimura: Tree-village).

The colors most often featured in their surnames are landscape colors-- black, white, green and blue. Kurosawa: black river. Aoki: green tree.
http://www.jref.com/language/japanese_surnames.shtml