h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So, I was (re)reading Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, when I chanced upon a character who was currently going by the name of Carmine Zuigiber. She is associated with the color red, which made me think of Carmen Sandiego; at another point, the same character is going by the name of Scarlet (or some variant spelling). This, in turn, made me also think of Scarlet O'Hara.

My train of thought, which has a habit of making huge leaps of logic, went: aha! Is the name "Carmen" etymologically related to the color red? Does this mean that her name is actually a reference to that of Scarlet O'Hara?

Answer: no. I looked up "Carmen", which means "song."

Oh well! Yet another random thought of mine which fell flat.

Carmen, at least, would have been referenced by Scarlett - as the opera of Carmen and its libretto precedes the novel of Scarlett by about 60 years.

Good line of thought, actually - as carmine is a word of a very red colour:

car⋅mine
–noun
1. a crimson or purplish-red color.
2. a crimson pigment obtained from cochineal.
Origin:
1705–15; < F carmin (color), carmine (pigment),

The cochineal is a very small insect that is harvested from plants and the colour is extracted from its shell. It takes many many of these little critters to produce a reasonable amount of colour - which is probably why carmine was usually reserved for the noble and wealthy.

Given that it was how colour was produced historically, of course .

But today it is - used as a natural red food colour.

Ahem. *steps off lectern*

very interesting.

Yeah, pity I searched for "Carmen" immediately without even thinking of "Carmine" ...