I rather think there is a correlation between paint colors and nail polish anyway, because when I lived in San Francisco, there was a house that clearly had been painted a violent shade of hot pink because the owner had looked at the color on her fingernails, loved it, and not considered what that color might look like if it were big.
L'Oreal actually has a lipstick shade called "Sunset Angora," which is, I suspect, what happens naturally when a person wearing lipstick kisses their long-haired cat. Names based on delicious foods seem to be popular, and I can see the anticipation of putting something on one's mouth called "raspberry ice" or "hazelnut mocha" is far more appealing than using a shade called "bitter melon" or "ricin red."
Or how about pharmaceuticals? The names of drug companies are hilarious. "Astra Zeneca" does not sound the least bit like a biopharmaceutical company, instead it evokes (for me) the deity that should be the antagonist to the Zoroastrian deity Ahura Mazda. I can certainly imagine a myth in which Ahura Madza and Astra Zeneca are locked in eternal mortal combat.
Through the miracle of mergers and acquisitions, GlaxoSmithKline now sounds like a hyphenated last name of a serial marriage addict. There used to be a Wellcome, a Beecham, and a Beckman associated with this one as well, but Glaxo-Smith-Kline-Wellcome-Beecham-Beckman doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.
The names of the drugs themselves: Levitra - of course it sounds "uplifting," it's for erectile dysfunction. Lipitor ought to be the name of a Pokemon. The slightly exotic "Yazmin" - birth control pills. How about Dammitol? Someone ought to invent that, we've all had days when we need that one. In fact, I could use one now.
