What's the Deal With 'Brick Yellow'?

[Black Six]

Kevin Hinkle recently provided the LEGO Ambassadors with some interesting trivia:

During the topic of color, I brought forth a question I’ve been asked numerous times: What’s the deal with LEGO color 005 – Brick Yellow? The AFOL community refers to this color as tan and I can certainly understand the confusion regarding our internal naming. So I asked if there was an answer I could share with our fans… and here it is:

 

“The name Brick yellow comes as a direct translation of the Danish name for the color: “Tegl Gul” – tegl meaning Brick (or mursten – not sure of other English words for it). Back then all colors were named in Danish and then later translated. The color Brick Yellow was implemented back when Modulex was a part of the moulding at LEGO and at the same time the color 004 Brick Red (Tegl Rød) was also available. As I also mentioned yesterday the original use was for brick walls for houses – so to imitate red or yellow houses.”

Share and enjoy!

[Rahkshi Lalonde]

ah yeah, that's what i thought!

 

my mom gardens and used to pick up all kinds of bricks for borders and edges, and that tan color was definetly what "yellow bricks" look like, so, made sense to me from the start. (though "tan" is a much shorter name. :n)

[Ballom Nom Nom]

Well, explained in that way I guess it makes some sense why the name originally came about. But given that there are, you know, Lego bricks, "Brick Yellow" in practice sounds like it's supposed to be the standard yellow of a Lego brick, which is clearly false.

 

Of course, I don't think I use a single official color name anyway; the BrickLink ones are much more sensible and concise, and the level of pedantry in insisting on official names is a bit strange to me.

 

~B~

[Bfahome]

For some reason this sounds like the setup for an episode of Seinfeld to me.

[Aanchir]

That makes sense to me. The naming also seems to follow a similar pattern to some later colors like Sand Yellow (Dark Tan) or Earth Orange (classic brown).

Great to have this sort of insight direct from the source!

 

Well, explained in that way I guess it makes some sense why the name originally came about. But given that there are, you know, Lego bricks, "Brick Yellow" in practice sounds like it's supposed to be the standard yellow of a Lego brick, which is clearly false.

 

Of course, I don't think I use a single official color name anyway; the BrickLink ones are much more sensible and concise, and the level of pedantry in insisting on official names is a bit strange to me.

 

~B~

Personally, I never insist on official names — I try to include multiple naming systems in any color-related post I make so that people know what I'm talking about — though I do tend to prefer official names to Bricklink names for several reasons.

 

Bricklink can have a problem with referring to multiple colors by the same name, or the same color by multiple names. This is especially a problem with metallic colors. If you use official names, then it's easy to identify that 315 Silver Metallic and 316 Titanium Metallic replaced 131 Silver and 147 Dark Grey Metallic between 2010 and 2011. If you use Bricklink names, then there WERE no new metallic colors between 2010 and 2011: they call Silver Metallic "Flat Silver", a color they semi-arbitrarily used for certain parts in 131 Silver from as early as 1998, and they call Titanium Metallic "Pearl Dark Gray", the same name they use for Dark Grey Metallic and Titanium Ink.

 

Bricklink names can also sometimes distort the actual relationships between colors. With official color names, it's obvious that Earth Orange (classic Brown) has the same relationship to Bright Orange (classic Orange) as Earth Blue (Dark Blue/Metru Blue) has to Bright Blue (classic Blue), or that Sand Yellow Metallic (Flat Dark Gold) is just a "pearl" version of Sand Yellow (Dark Tan), or that Transparent Light Bluish Green (Trans-Very Lt Blue) is just a transparent version of Light Bluish Green (Aqua), which is in turn just a light version of Bright Bluish Green (Dark Turquoise). Bricklink names don't express those relationships.

And of course, certain colors like Red Flip/Flop, Yellow Flip/Flop, and Silver Flip/Flop (the colors of the copper, gold, and silver masks from 2001–2002) do not have Bricklink names of their own at all. Neither do Metallic Bright Red, Metallic Bright Blue, Metallic Dark Green, and Metallic Earth Orange, some of the armor colors of the Rahkshi, or Transparent Fluorescent Red, Tahu's original eye color. All these colors are simply conflated with other colors, if they are inventoried at all (the silver and gold masks from the 2002 mask packs are not). Dark Nougat doesn't exist on Bricklink either, and Dark Nougat parts are arbitrarily called either Dark Orange or Earth Orange on Bricklink despite obviously not being either in a side-by-side comparison. Problematic to say the least. As a Bionicle fan, it's much more convenient to use a naming system where at least every Bionicle color actually HAS a name.

 

Speaking of Bricklink names, if anybody's interested, Brick Red's name on Bricklink is Fabuland Brown

Edited October 17, 2015 by Aanchir

[Ta-metru_defender]

Well then. That explains that.

 

[Kopekemaster]

I'm guessing they mean adobe bricks or something similar? Seems sort of like an odd name, instead of just calling it tan or sand or something like that. but I can understand why.

[Voltex]

The more you-

 

Well then. That explains that.
 

 

Oh, I'm too late