When the term auburn was first introduced into the English language around 1430, it initially meant “white” or “yellow-white”. At that time, there were numerous accepted spellings such as aburne, abourne, aborne, abron, and abrun. The significance of the spelling abrun lies in the fact that brun was the Middle English word for brown, leading to confusion between the two. This confusion eventually led to a shift in the definition over time to its current meaning of “reddish-brown”, which is quite fascinating! The original “white” connotation becomes more evident as we trace back through Old French auborne and Medieval Latin alburnus (“off-white”) to the Latin word albus, simply meaning “white” (as seen in the character Albus Dumbledore from Harry Potter; J.K. Rowling deliberately chose the name for its meaning). Ultimately, through Proto-Italic, the term can be traced back to PIE helbos, also meaning “white”.
