Cambridge blue has made me colour blind. Until I went to university in that lovely English city I knew the difference between blue and green. Now I am lost in the no man’s land between Wedgwood blue and eau de nil.
If you saw Cambridge winning the University Boat Race against Oxford on the Thames last Saturday (April 3), you will have seen them wearing the latest version of Cambridge blue. As well as a colour, a “blue” is both what you are and what you win when you represent the university in a sport – although some “lesser” sports award only “half” blues.
I have to say the shade of the colour does change a lot. In the 1970s the scarves worn by blues were DEFINITELY slightly green, although there was a “ladies’” version far closer to Wedgwood blue.
Then when I became a fan of Cardiff Rugby club in the late 1970s, they were the “Blue & Blacks” – and the colours were actually named as Cambridge blue and black. But in the early 1990s they, too moved over from a greenish hue towards Wedgwood blue.
I only fully realised I was colour blind in this area when on a course at work. It was in a room painted Cambridge blue. For some reason I mentioned it was blue and everyone was appalled and said no, it was green…
I have two jackets in the colour. I no longer try to give their colour a name and wear green necklaces with them out of cussedness.
It makes you realise that how we name colours is a very subjective area. It depends on what language you are speaking, too. For example in Welsh the word “glas” can mean grey or green as well as blue. It also means a stream. Perhaps that’s a clue – it refers to the colour of water, the sea, or even glass, in different lights…
Many names for colours that we think have existed forever weren’t invented until we had something to attach them to – here I am thinking there was no orange in our language before we had tasted oranges or pink before we had seen carnations and pinks?
Then look at the rainbow. We arbitrarily split it into seven colours: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. We take the trouble to name indigo between blue and violet, and orange between yellow and red, but we don’t bother to name that which falls between green and blue – which I think would best be called cyan, from the printer’s ink of that shade.
There clearly in a need for this – think of all the objects in nature whose names we also have to use to describe their colour, as we have no “real” word for it – turquoise, teal, kingfisher and peacock…
So far we have said little of eau de nil (water of the Nile). This is a pale yellow green colour much used in fashionable decor in late Victorian and Edwardian times in Britain (either side of 1900). To me the original Cambridge blue veered sharply in the direction of eau de nil.
However, it seems nowadays that the name eau de nil is being applied to items that are distinctly peppermint green (which also looks blue, doesn’t it – look at this peppermint green Porsche).
I challenge you to Google image search the words “eau de nil” and see what a range of colours you get – unless of course the screen images don’t reflect the “true” colours. Here are a couple of “blue” eau de nil offerings from Laura Ashley and Fortnum & Mason.
Finally, I find that Hunter, who made the wellies worn by the winning Cambridge boat race team this year, actually call the colour of those boots eau de nil. Yet they are the latest Cambridge blue – and to me they still look like peppermint green – or peppermint blue? I guess it’s still something of a grey area…
… and University Challenge too.
The varieties of green-blue above are amazing. But I had no idea Cambridge blue had morphed, and thought my aged TV was to blame for the colour of the wellies last Saturday.
I’ve always had trouble with dark reds/greens and brown. Red/green colour blindness afflicts some male members of my family and I thought I was possibly a carrier of the gene. On the other hand I could just be bad at colours. In fact that’s more likely to be the case because I have long struggled to find names for the many blues/greens of the sea. The artists of the family despair of me.
Don’t know if you’ve read M.M. Kaye, but she always managed to conjour up a name for a colour. She trained at Central Saint Martins before turning to writing.
Well I’m glad there was someone out there with whom this struck a chord. It has bugged me for years – I have a replica Cambridge blue and white hooped rugby shirt and on that the blue is DEFINITELY green.
I must look up this M M Kaye.
Do you remember Kevin P and his colour blindness and how he would dye his milk in the communal fridge blue with food colouring so no one else would touch it?
No I don’t remember that – an original take.
Even a colour blind person will see that it is no longer milk’s pristine white (& cream) colour once he’d added blue food colouring – so it would presumably raise the same YUCH factors in him as in the other users of the fridge. Unless, of course, he was confident of the harmlessness of the colouring, in which case his colour blindness is irrelevant.
Sorry to take so long to answer your comment. It got me thinking around in circles.
I’m sure you are right, of course. Or am I so sure?
I always think of blue food as not so much off or tainted, but just a bit alien. For that reason I used to love drinking from a blue glass, as it all seemed a bit Star Trekky. In fact if I had been as witty as my friend, I possibly would have done the same milk trick myself, as I like to challenge conventions.
But your point is a valid one and I was just saying what we thought at the time. You are the first person to question that memory 🙂
Best wishes…
PS On another tack – the rainbow. Do we perceive discrete bands of colour because of the way the colour receptor cells in our eyes work? Red on/green off, etc? Another thing to ponder next time there’s a rainy day.
I just read this paragraph from in “Wigs on the Green” by Nancy Mitford:
“That evening Mr Leader was dragged from his bed by masked men wearing Union Jack shirts and flung into an adjacent duck pond. As the weather was extremely hot he took no chill and suffered nothing worse than a little mortification and the loss of his eau-de-nil pyjama trousers.”
I googled “eau de nil” and was delighted to find your post. Thank you, I can see those “pyjama trousers”!
Oh, the wonders of Google! Thank you so much for taking the trouble to share that. I don’t think I came across the term eau-de-nil myself until I saw the kitchen in my in-laws’ Victorian house, painted in that colour.
And mortification – there’s another great word!
I’m finding several of my posts are drawing lots of hits from serendipitous Googling. For example my “Words from Celtic roots” is top because of people Googling “penguin”!
Have a great day.
x
I found your wonderful blog when looking online for a definition of the color “eau de nil”, which was unfamiliar to me. I had seen a mention of it in an old Georgette Heyer murder mystery (the drapes and carpet were “eau de nil”). A quick search online brought up your “Cambridge Blue” posting, above. Serendipity! I have a new favorite color and a new favorite blog!
Joan (Oregon, USA)
Thank you! Your words are too kind 🙂
Just ran across eau de nil mentioned in a book (Longbourn by Jo Baker, full of old Edwardian vocabulary) and the Interwebs brought me you. Here in the U. S. we might call that Tiffany blue after the color of boxes used by the well-known jeweler. Cut-and-paste not working, so take a peek. thanks for your thoughtful post. Teal/kingfisher are my favorite colors.
All very interesting!
There’s a whole Wikipedia page for Tiffany blue, which is something I hadn’t heard of before. I see your point about the similarity.
And for anyone interested, here’s a link to a review of the Longbourn book, which is a take on Jane Austen’s Pride & prejudice.
Thanks for your kind comments 🙂