Quote Originally Posted by Tobus View Post
When a supplier sells kilt hose in multiple shades of brown, they need some way for customers to differentiate them. The most logical way would be to use names that people can associate with what they see in nature, or common items they see in their everyday lives which help them envision that colour. This is commonly done with all colours. For example, nobody complains about the use of the colour "mustard". Why not just call it yellow? Well, because it's an apt descriptor that implies a deeper tone of yellow than other lighter yellow shades. Or the colour "salmon" being used to describe a deeper orange-pink hue. "Charcoal" is a very accurate descriptor of a dark grey that simply can't be captured by calling it dark grey.
I realize this strategy should work for 97% of the population, but for those of us who are color-deficient, it may as well be in Russian. In my experience, I've learned to avoid making assumptions based on 'poetic' descriptors because I've gotten burned in the past. It's a lot like the language used to sell wines: helpful for the enthusiast, but ... not so much for me. I'd far prefer more prosaic terms like "medium brown," "gray-green," "blue green," etc. I was not entirely kidding with the idea of using hexidecimal codes, because I encounter them a lot in computer illustration and they make sense to me.

This is in no sense a criticism of common marketing techniques - just observations from different perspective.