What's in a name? A lot, when you're looking at paint colors.

Every weekend since school ended, you can find my daughter, Valerie, and me at Lowe's, pulling paint swatches from Valspar's Martha Stewart collection. Our immersion in paint colors has been prompted by Valerie's plan to repaint her older brother's empty bedroom before she moves into it. "What do you think about 'Waning Moon' compared to 'Snowy Egret'?"

Although Lowe's also carries Laura Ashley, Eddie Bauer and Waverly paint collections, once we started reading the names on the Martha Stewart paint chips, the other designers didn't stand a chance. Think of painting a room "Coffee" color and it might as well be Folgers. But the same color in Martha's line is called "Iced Latte." Sounds yummy. "Sand" sounds so boring; but looking at Martha's paint chip and imagining painting a room "Zen Garden"-Deep breath, I feel more relaxed already.

Martha brings her refined sensibility - and some really great copywriting - to the names her designers come up with to describe paint colors. "Pussy Willow Tip," "Camisole," "Otter," "Apothecary Jar," "Chardonnay Bottle. She can even make gray-brown sound like an intriguing color: "Pumpernickel Loaf."

Just holding swatches called "Lavender Soap," "Silk Gloves," "Pressed Rose," "Cameo Brooch," and "Vintage Map" takes me to a more beautiful place. I picture sitting next to Martha on an antique settee in her former residence, Turkey Hill Farm. Everything around us is tasteful and elegant. "Oh, wouldn't my embossed stationery be a lovely shade for a paint color?" she says. "Or how about the Lobster Bisque I'm serving for lunch. That's such a beautiful shade of red." I feel richer just thinking about these things. I wonder if she makes a color called "Microsoft Stock Certificate."

That got Valerie and I started thinking about what names we would come up with if we looked around our surroundings for inspiration. We pretty quickly realized that they might not have the same positive connotations. In our world, what Martha calls "Tapenade" would be "Cat Barf." Martha's "Freshwater Aquarium"-for us it's more like "Ty-D-Bol Blue." And in today's economy, her "Scented Notepaper" would have to be renamed "Pink Slip."

After bringing home a stack of paint chips the size of a deck of cards, Valerie began realizing that the names of the colors were influencing her opinion of them. How could she not like a paint color named after one of her favorite things, "Siamese Cat." If the "Steamer Trunk" color she was considering instead was named "Evergreen" she wouldn't have taken a second look at it. She even tried covering up the names on the chips so they wouldn't affect her attraction to them but by that time it was too late. Even though she has eliminated "Paris Pink" as a potential color several times, it keeps making its way back into her favorites just because Paris conjures up such enticing images.

We finally moved on from paint chips to buying a few samples to actually try on the wall. On our orange-peel texture walls, "Kyoto Green" looks more like "Iguana Skin" so that one is out of the running. It looks like the strong contenders are "Sugar Egg Pink" and "Cocoon."

But wait, Valerie's back from Lowe's with "Downspout" and "Jordan Almond."