Movie Titles in Latin with Colours Quiz

Answer: A Clockwork Orange

Google Translate first came up with "Aurantiacum mechanicum", but that misses the point. So I've searched a little bit further for a better translation.

Mechanismus is the Latin word for any type of machinery, and we need to add the word horologicus to specify that it is a contraption to tell the time. Classical Latin evolved in a period before the invention of clocks, so I had to come up with a descriptive neologism.

Classic Latin has no specific word for the colour orange. Google translate construed the word aurantiacus, which is rather accurate. My dictionary mentions flammeus (which I find too reddish) for the colour and malum aureum for the fruit orange (but aureus sounds to me too yellowish). I also found somewhere the word luteus, but that too is a too pale hue.

So the title translates to "A Clockwork Orange" (1971), directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Malcolm McDowell as Alex DeLarge, a young delinquent fascinated by sex and violence. After being given a long prison sentence for murder, Alex chose an experimental treatment to be released prematurely. But the treatment had curious side effects...

Answer: The Blue Lagoon

The Latin word lacuna is quite easily translated to the English lagoon - it's almost identical. But lacuna also can be translated as a gap.

Caerulea is the feminine singular of caeruleus, indicating (bright) blue. Other hues of blue may be indicated as glaucus (which is more teal) or lividus (blue with a reddish hue).

Randal Kleiser directed "The Blue Lagoon" (1980), and there was a sequel too - in spite of relatively low ratings for the original. Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins played young teens stranded on an apparently uninhabited island after a shipwreck.

Answer: The Green Mile

Once again, relying on Google Translate and the AI it uses, gave awkward results. Google suggested a translation as "Miliarium Viride", while a miliarium is only a milestone. The exact translation for a mile is "mille passi", a thousand passes.

And in classical Latin a passus was the double step a Roman soldier would take: first foot ahead, then the other foot ahead and passing by - so a passus was (according to the stature of the soldier) a bit more than a metre. My dictionary mentions about five feet or 148 cm for a passus.

Viridis (plural viridi) on the other hand is "green".

The correct title is thus "The Green Mile" (1991), directed by Frank Darabont. The protagonists were Tom Hanks as Paul Edgecombe and Michael Clarke Duncan as John Coffey. When Coffey was locked up on death row, the guard Edgecombe noticed several events that went beyond his understanding.

Answer: Pretty in Pink

This one seems quite obvious. Pulchra is the feminine of pulcher, which means beautiful or pretty.

And rosea, the feminine form of roseus, is Latin for pink (not red: that would be ruber or rufus).

So the correct title in English is "Pretty in Pink" (1986) and relates to a girl or woman. This latter remark is evidenced by the Latin translation but not explicitly evident from the original title.

The movie was directed by Howard Deutch and starred Molly Ringwald as a teenage girl who had to choose between two possible lovers. When her father bought her a pink dress, this fact forced a breakthrough in her love life.

Answer: Meet Joe Black

This title contains a first name: Iosephum is the accusative of Iosephus, the Latin form of Joseph (or Joe when shortened). Nigrum (accusative of niger) means black. And conveni is the imperative of convenire, "to meet".

So the full title is "Meet Joe Black" (1984). In this supernatural movie directed by Martin Brest, the character Death assumed the name Joe Black (role by Brad Pitt) to come and fetch the rich founder of a media empire William Parrish (played by Anthony Hopkins). But things got complicated when Joe fell for the charming Susan, William's daughter (role by Claire Forlani).

Answer: Red Dawn

Ruber and the feminine form rubra are common Latin words for the colour red. Aurora is a feminine word meaning dawn (as well as the name of the goddess who personifies the dawn).

John Milius directed "Red Dawn" (1984). Patrick Swayze starred as one of a group of American high school students confronting an invasion by Soviet military.

Answer: Yellow Submarine

Classic Latin did not have a word for a submarine, because the first submersible boat was only created many centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire. So once again we have to be creative with the language.

Google Translate invented "submarina", a very logical choice - in many other Indo-European languages the word for a submarine literally refers to a boat under the sea. In Latin we would then have navicula submarina, which obviously would be shortened to submarina.

My dictionary does not list a true translation for a submarine. But it mentions the verb submergere (to descend under the surface), and this verb leads of course to the derivative submersibile - something that can descend under the surface. In English it is quite similar: a submersible.

As a submarine is considered feminine (both in the Latin neologism as in English and several other contemporary Indo-European languages), the colour adjective should be feminine too - not masculine as Google Translate erroneously suggested. The common Latin word for yellow is flavus, or flava in the feminine form.

Most of you know the song "Yellow Submarine" (1966) by the Beatles, but this song did also inspire director John Dunning for a psychedelic animated movie that hit the theatres in 1968. The story was quite confusing: the Beatles embarked on a yellow submarine and sailed a sea of green to find Pepperland, and singing more than a dozen songs they defeated the Blue Meanies (a race of pessimistic creatures).

Answer: Purple Rain

Purpureus and the feminine form purpurea are not that hard to translate: these terms refer to the colour purple. But the other word in the Latin title is not color (Latin for colour) but pluvia, which translates to rain.

So here we don't need Steven Spielberg's movie "The Color Purple" (1985), but the 1984 movie "Purple Rain" directed by Albert Magnoli. Prince starred in this movie as an aspiring concert singer trying to secure his place at the nightclub "First Avenue". At first it seemed all his life and career would shatter, until he sang the title song.

Answer: Fifty Shades of Grey

Quinquaginta means fifty, colores (singular color) translates to colours (or hues) and grisei (plural of griseus) is gray (written in American English as grey). The Latin title corresponds thus to "Fifty Shades of Grey".

Once again Google Translate is not exactly reliable: the site suggested "Quinquaginta umbrae grisei". There are two errors in this translation: umbra (plural umbrae) does not mean a hue, but only a shadow or something that gives shadow. Furthermore the gender of the noun and adjective do not correspond: if you use a feminine noun, the adjective should be feminine too - so it should be umbrae griseae.

"Fifty Shades of Grey" (2015) was directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson. Dakota Johnson starred as Anastasia Steele and Jamie Dornan as Christian Grey. In this first movie of a trilogy, Anastasia interviewed Christian and was lured into a sadomasochist relation with him.

Answer: Brown Sugar

Saccharum is Latin for sugar. And the little known Latin word fuscus (neuter form fuscum) means brown.

"Brown Sugar" is the title of several movies. I chose the romantic movie from 2002 directed by Rick Famuyiwa starring Taye Diggs as Dre and Sanaa Lathan as Syd. Dre and Syd were childhood friends, and as an adult Dre became for scouting and assisting young musicians, while Syd was hired as chief editor for a hip-hop magazine. They met frequently professionally, but gradually they developed a love relation too.