The name of that horse with a light gold coat, the palomino, derives from Spanish for young dove, because these animals share similar coloring. In the same way, a sorrel horse has the same color as a certain kind of sorrel plant. The names for the colors of horses come from three main traditions: English from the United Kingdom, Spanish, and French. Western Words, a book of cowboy slang collected by Ramon Adams, contains many more examples, including albino, bald-faced, bayo, bayo coyote, blaze, blood bay, buckskin, calico, chestnut, chin spot, claybank, cremello, flea bitten, grulla, moros, overo, paint, palomilla, piebald, pinto, race, roan, sabino, skewbald, snip, sock, star, star strip, stew ball, stocking, tobiano, trigeuno, and zebra dun. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “The Names We Give the Colors of Horses”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, this is Joe Winkler from Worland, Wyoming.
Hi, Joe. Welcome.
What can we do for you?
Well, I have a question about horses.
I’ve always wondered how horses got their names for their color, because you have names like sorrel, and a sorrel is a brown horse.
Right, yeah.
And then you have like bay, which is a brown horse with a black mane and tail.
I mean, there’s dozens of them.
There’s Palomino and Roan and Dunn.
I mean, this has bothered me since I was six years old.
Wow.
Well, we’re going to scratch that itch for you for sure.
So I’m going to talk about just a couple of these, and then I’m going to refer you to a book that’s going to have some more answers for you, all right?
Okay.
The first one I want to talk about is Palomino, and I think Martha’s eyes lit up when you said that word before because it’s got this Spanish connection, and basically what it means is young dove.
And so it refers to the color of a young dove, which does not fully come into its adult plumage.
And, of course, there are different kinds of doves and there’s different kinds of plumage they might have.
But in general, it’s the kind of dove that you might have found in a typical Spanish town, not even a Mexican town, but a Spanish town.
The thing with all of these horse colors is they come from three different linguistic traditions, at least three, maybe four.
So from the English, the United Kingdom English, from Spanish, two different kinds of Spanish, Spain Spanish and Mexican Spanish, and then from French.
And then you might throw in Arabic in there because there’s a little bit of Arabic and maybe even a tiny bit of Basque.
It just depends which color you’re talking about.
So tons of different traditions here all coming together in English, which has no shame whatsoever about borrowing words wherever it likes.
And here they are in horse names.
So Palomino, young dove.
The bay is interesting to me because it is the same thing for the horse color that it is in cooking.
So bay leaves are where the term bay for the color of a horse comes from.
And both the term for the leaf and the term for the color come from the same French word, which means bay leaf.
So it’s about the color of that leaf, the leaf when it’s dried, I believe.
Really?
Yeah, it’s another reddish brown.
Just like sorrel is kind of a reddish brown, bay is a kind of a reddish brown.
Now, sorrel, the problem with sorrel is there are lots of, it’s S-O-R-R-E-L for anyone who is not quite understanding the word.
There are lots of sorrels in the world.
It’s a common name for many different types of plants.
But it’s a particular European variety which has this deep reddish brown hue to it.
That’s the color that they’re talking about.
Okay.
Well, thank you for the information.
Yeah.
One more thing before you go.
There’s a great book.
It’s a classic book by Ramon Adams, R-A-M-O-N Adams.
It’s called Western Words.
And so it’s a dictionary of kind of cowboy speech.
And it’s pretty reliable and pretty thorough.
It’s a fantastic work.
And he has all the colors for horses in there that I’ve ever thought of.
The list includes, just for a few, albino, bald face, bay, bayo, coyote, blaze, blood bay, buckskin, calico, chestnut, chinspot, claybank, carmelo, flea bitten, grula, moros, overo, paint, Palomia, Piebald, Pinto, Race, Rhone, Sabino, Skubald, Snip, Snip, Sox, Sorrel, Star, Starstrip, Stew Ball, Stocking, Tobiano, Tregano, and Zebra Dunn.
And I skipped a few.
You know, and I’ve owned every one of those.
You have.
No kidding.
You are a true horse person.
No, no.
It’s just some of those, like Snip, those deal with the color on their nose.
Right.
And the Star is like that, too, right?
And Starstrip, yeah.
Well, thank you for your call.
We really appreciate it.
Thanks, Joe.
Happy trails.
All right.
Take care, Joe.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Goodbye.
Call us about the ones you’re thinking about, 877-929-9673, or send them to us in email.
That address is words@waywordradio.org.
