What to name the carpet

Finding myself waiting in a carpet store recently, I killed time looking at carpet samples. It is a huge store, but I stood in one spot for several minutes and examined scores of little squares, each different even if only marginally so. What struck me were their names.

Some of these names were suggestive of color or pattern: Graham Cracker, Pecan, Oat Meal, Speckled Doe, Aspen, Morning Tea, Wheat Field, Georgia Clay and Rawhide, for example. Others gave no clue at all as to what the carpet might look like: Delicate, Bird's Nest, Jet Set, Cannon, Wishing Well, Leather Strap, Kitten Whisper, Bride to Be, Fossil, Moose Antler, Angel Wings, Caviar, Swap, Poem, Bashful, Tahiti, Birdhouse, Fence Post, Sea Bean, Vigor.

Perhaps most curious of all were those with names like Vintage, Traditional and Natural. These names suggest there should be something familiar about them. Yet the patterns, frankly, were hardly distinguishable from those next to them.

Most of the names could have been assigned randomly, and perhaps they were. How, I wondered, do carpets get their names? Whose job is it to select an original name for each new carpet pattern? And how do manufacturers and dealers keep them all straight? Numbers, of course. Each carpet pattern has a number for official use, but names like Kitten Whisper and Georgia Clay are more likely to please the customer. Wouldn't you rather walk on Angel Wings than GR3877614?

Paint manufacturers must face the same difficulty. How does one find the right name for each shade of blue or brown? A quick web search turned up, from just one manufacturer, Linen Pink, Southern Belle Pink, Peppermint Pink, Terra Cotta Pink, Shell Pink, Italian Pink and Zephyr Pink. None of these should be confused with Dixie Dawn or Cameo Rose, both of which look pink to me.

Whosever job it is to think up these names, I'm glad it isn't mine. I recall the great difficulty my wife and I had finding the perfect name for our baby all those years ago. That's not the reason we stopped at just one child, but it would have sufficed.