Danil, a ninth-grader in Traverse City, Michigan, says his class is curious about the term baby blue. This color name apparently has to do with the pale eye color of some newborn babies. A poem reprinted in newspapers across the United States in the 1860s included the phrase eyes of baby blue and may have helped popularize the term. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Why Do We Say “Baby Blue”?”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Daniil Bumashko.
Where are you calling us from, Daniil?
Traverse City, Michigan.
Oh, excellent.
Well, welcome to the show.
What can we do for you?
So I had a question about a word.
We were listening to one of your podcasts in class. It was about Jet Black, and our teacher asked, does anyone have any questions about any words? And I asked the word Baby Blue, why it’s called that.
Cool.
So baby blue, you mean the sort of very light, delicate blue?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Do you have any thoughts about that, Daniil, why we might say baby blue?
I don’t know. Maybe like eyes, like when they’re first born, their eyes are like light blue. That’s all I could think of, really, because not all eyes are blue when they’re born, but that’s my guess.
Right. Not all eyes are blue when babies are born, but for a lot of Caucasian babies, that is the case. They’re a sort of blue color that turns darker in the first year of life. So that may well be the association there, that it’s the blue that little babies have, certain babies.
And there was a poem back in the 1860s that was reprinted in a whole lot of newspapers that had a line in it about our dove had eyes of baby blue. And I suspect that that helped popularize that because we don’t really see it before the early 19th century.
Okay, that’s interesting.
Yeah.
Well, cool. Well, thank you.
Thank you, Danielle. Thanks for your call. Appreciate it.
Yeah, have a good day.
Take care. Bye.
Bye.
