Re: [csswg-drafts] Change three color names (#5284)

> > Indian Red is named after a famous red pigment from India, and has no connection to Native Americans.
> 
> Arguments from etymology are pretty weak; it's hard to deny that both "indian" and "red" both have negative connotations in the US (especially combined!) and AFAICT many assume it is connecting to Native Americans without knowing otherwise. The only counterargument I've seen against renaming things using it is that to remove it effectively is writing out India.

Right, etymology is only a minor part, but it's not nothing; if the name *did* have racist origins that would be a strong reason to change, but it doesn't at all.

So then the question is - is there any harm being done? I'm not aware of any racist usage of the color that would warrant a removal or rename.

I *am* supportive of adding a note to the spec *explaining* the name, because I also didn't know the source of the name before Alex Sexton's talk on the history of the color names.

> > Navajo White refers to the background color of the Navajo Nation flag. I was under the impression that it was defined as the "official" color, but I can't find support for that now; slightly changing it to a less unfortunate hex code would probably be fine.
> 
> I can't find any official source more specific than "tan".

Yup, that's my conclusion as well, so a minor change would probably be fine. And including it in the explanatory note would be good as well.

> > Moccasin has no particular special meaning, but also it's just the name of a type of shoe.
> 
> I presume the potential objection comes from it being a type of (historically Native American) shoe, and an Algonquian loanword.

I'm not sure what the objection there is, tho. English has a lot of loanwords from native languages; it doesn't *appear* to me that this one is being used in a problematic way. It's just the color of pale leather, which moccasins were made from.

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I'll note that I have no attachment to any of the color names, and would be fine with deprecating most of them anyway. ^_^

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Received on Tuesday, 7 July 2020 21:00:40 UTC