“Tomato” versus “#FF6347”—the tragicomic history of CSS color names

The “Named Colors” section of the CSS Color Module Level 4—the latest specification for color values and properties within the Cascading Style Sheets language—are 141 standard colors. Each has its own name, so beyond the essentials of “black” and “white” are shades like “papaya whip,” a warm orange pastel; “lemon chiffon,” a faint, milky yellow; and “burlywood,” which has likely made an appearance on a safari tour guide’s shorts.

At first glance, these names seem fluffy, and they bear connotations of sugary, whimsical romanticism. Where do such abstract names come from, and why are they a part of something as methodical as writing code?

The answer to these questions begins in 1980s Massachusetts. Originally, the colors were a product of the X Window System (X), a graphical user interface (GUI) released by MIT in 1984. In June of 1986, the first list of GUI colors, which was tuned to the DEC VT240 series terminal, shipped with the third release of X’s tenth version (X10R3). It comprised 69 basic shades, with 138 entries to account for different cases in the color names (e.g., lowercase with spacing like “dark red” versus camel case like “DarkRed”).

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