As anyone who has researched rabbit colors knows, different breeds have different names for the same color. No one is sure why this breed is called that, and that one calls it this. I think it has to do with the mindset of the founding breeders and some of those go back to the country of origin. It might have been how the color was described in that country and then how it was translated to English. Or my theory...Americans will always create new words and they just ignored the original translations.
If you look at ARBA's Standard of Perfection (SOP), you can get pretty confused. Take Flemish Giants, a very old breed. What most breeds call Chinchilla is called Light Gray in Flemish. Sandy and Fawn, I'm still not sure just what these are genetically in Flemish. I assume they're agouti, but not sure how it translates in other breeds. It gets really confusing when someone doesn't specify the breed they are talking about. Fawn in Lops (and Flemish) doesn't seem to be the same genetics as Fawn in Netherland Dwarfs. Maybe it is, but Creme in Lops seems to be the closest to Fawn in dwarfs.
And that's what it comes down to...what the color is genetically. How sweet it would be if ARBA standardized the color names across the board based on genetics. There is a finite number of genetic combinations for color so it could certainly be done, but that's probably never going to happen. Among different breeds, well, it's like trying to communicate with different languages.
I've only raised Netherland Dwarfs so that's the language I speak. The reason I felt like writing this was a recent discussion about an unrecognised color on a dwarf. They were trying to decide what to call it. The owner of the odd color was flaunting her genetic knowledge and making it more complicated than it needed to be, and I don't think she was entirely accurate in her reasoning. I'm all for keeping it simpler so everyone can understand.
So what was the color? It was a Sable Point with tan pattern trimmings. White markings on the nostrils, ears, tail, and belly. Some people might call it "martenized". Genetically, this would be a non-extension Sable Marten, but she started the discussion by calling it non-extension Silver Marten. Big difference there! Let's pick those colors apart.
It was a Sable Point, no doubt about that. Sable Pt is non-extension Siamese Sable...shaded. Sable Marten is tan pattern Siamese Sable...again, shaded. Silver Marten is not shaded. It's Otter minus Otter's gold trimmings. In other words, the gold has been replaced by silver (white). Referring to this as Silver Marten was completely incorrect.
So what do you call it? Easy. Sable Point Marten. Most everyone can grasp that concept. This person even suggested a color in Europe which didn't translate to anything an American breeder can relate to. I forget but it was something gray. Really? Maybe if you're colorblind, you'd see gray, but this bunny was brown! Non-extension Sable Marten might be the correct term but who wants to write/say all that every time. It's why other non-extension colors like Tort and Orange have nice short names. Sable Pt Marten...short and easy to understand.
I'm old school, and while I have adapted my thinking to allow for new (to me) genetic knowledge, I still think of many things the way I learned them. One thing that was hard to grasp was Tort Otter vs. Tort Marten. I learned from the old time breeders of the time (Glenna Huffman for one, who published several genetics books, and who I knew personally) and a non-extension tan pattern was referred to as Tort Marten. A Tort with white tan pattern trim. Several years ago I was corrected that this is actually Tort Otter because of its genetics. Ok, I've accepted that, and since everyone calls it that, I do too.
I tried to accept that the concept of Tort Marten doesn't exist. But wait...it does. A friend showed me a non-extension Silver Marten. It's not yellow so I guess technically it's not a Tort, but since "torted" is often used to describe a non-extension color, it can be used on this. What did this Tort Marten look like more than anything else? Ermine!
Ermine is another term I learned early on. It's showable as Frosty in some breeds, but it's not recognised in dwarfs. Ermine is non-extension Chinchilla. A new term a lot of people seem to like (I guess for how exotic it sounds) is "Ghost Chin". This is one the British came up with, but I prefer the old American term. We are in America after all, and if we had stuck to the European color names, everything would be completely different! And there's the general theme of naming dwarf colors for the animals they most closely resemble. Otter, marten, chinchilla, sable, lynx, etc. Sable Point looks like and is the name of a variety of Siamese cat. Ermine isn't really an exact match for the color on rabbits. The ermine is a weasel with a winter morph coat of pure white with a black tail tip. Ermine fur coats were pure white with the black tips included for accents. The color on rabbits is actually closer to what a silver fox fur coat looks like....white with widely scattered black ticking. Maybe Silver Fox would be the correct term for the color following that line of thought, but there is a breed called Silver Fox so Ermine it became. I'd have to look it up but maybe ermines do have an in-between phase where they look like the rabbit color.
BTW, I was an adult when it was still fashionable to wear fur. I loved my rabbit fur coats and dreamed of affording the pricier furs. Nothing made me feel warmer. Silver Fox is a luxurious gorgeous fur! Imagine how rabbits could be revitalized as a commercial industry if it was ok to wear fur again.
How do you tell the difference between an Ermine and a Tort Marten? It's in the genetics. Chin is agouti and dominant. If neither parent is agouti, it's not Ermine. Tort Marten is tan pattern which cannot carry agouti. If the parents are tan pat, it's a Tort Marten. If the parents are both, it's a bit trickier, but what I saw on this Tort Marten was that it was considerably darker than Ermine. It was light gray instead of white.
A few years ago, an importer brought in what is called Yellow Chin in Europe, and tried to spread them around. This was something entirely new to everyone and I was frustrated by the importer's inability to explain it well. It looks like Ermine but it's not non-extension. The best I could get from the very poor communication skills of the importer and what little info I could find is that it's a wideband Chinchilla. Wideband is a completely different gene than non-extension. It's what makes the Tan (color and breed) black and red, and fills in the white agouti markings on Steel with black or brown. On Chin, it made the white band wider to the point of the entire coat being predominately white. Apparently to those that understand its use, Yellow Chin produces perfectly colored Chins and Silver Martens with bright crisp white. However, I saw much confusion and even the importer kept referring to it as Ermine. If you use Ermine with Silver Marten, you are going to end up with Tort Otter/Marten! It's not the same, and when people introduce a new idea like this, they need to explain it well or every newbie is going to think that Ermine that popped up in a litter is useful that way. Oh and what about its name "Yellow Chin"? It's as far from yellow as you can get so that makes no sense.
An example where an unrecognised color became accepted with just one name is Blue-eyed White. Many years ago, BEW breeders agreed that the marked offspring from BEW x any other color should be called just one thing. Before that, they were called sports, dutch-marked, mis-marked, depending on who you were talking to. I even know someone who still calls them parti-color. He puts that on his pedigrees, and the only one I've ever known to call them that. Those terms actually refer to a specific breed or a separate gene. BEW breeders (all breeds) all agreed they should be called Vienna-marked (VM) and Vienna-carrier (VC) to separate them from the other genes and breeds. It became commonly known, and even Evans Pedigree Software included the VM/VC designation in its database. It made things so much simpler and now everyone who gets into breeding BEW learns it right off the bat.
Another term I learned from Glenna is "ee". This is the designation for non-extension in the color genetic code. Rough example: Aa-Bb-Cc-Dd-ee. I began to do as she did and call some things with this prefix such as ee Himi. Why not call all the unshowable non-extension colors this way? Non-extension Otter/Marten would be ee Otter/Marten. It would be so simple if everyone agreed (like BEW breeders) that this best describes this color code. The Sable Pt Marten that sparked this blog would be ee Sable Marten. Simple.
What you call a color is important to understand it within your breed, and that includes the unshowable colors. Can't we at least keep it simple and somewhat uniform?
tnt
