Auburn

Auburn (pronounced aw-bern)

(1) A reddish-brown or golden-brown color.

(2) Of something colored auburn (most often used to describe hair).

(3) A widely used locality name.

(4) As the Auburn system (also known as the New York system and Congregate system), a notably severe penal method created in the early nineteenth century and implemented in Auburn Prison, Auburn, New York.

1400–1450: From the late Middle English abron, abrune aborne & abourne (light brown, yellowish brown), a sixteenth century alteration (because of a conflation with the later spelling auburne with the Middle English broune & brun (brown) which also changed the spelling) of the earlier auborne (yellowish-white, flaxen) from the Middle French & Old French auborne & alborne (blond, flaxen, off-white) from the Medieval alburnus (fair-haired, literally “like white or whitish”) and related to alburnum (the soft, newer wood in the trunk of a tree found between the bark and the hardened heartwood, often paler in color than the heartwood) from alba & albus (white).  Since the meaning shifted from blonde to hues of red, auburn has tended to be used exclusively of women’s hair.  The noun use dates from 1852.  Auburn is often associated with the Venetian painter Tiziano Vecellio (circa 1490-1576; known usually in English as Titian), especially the works of his early career when the colors tended to be more vivid but the modern practice is to apply auburn to darker shades although there’s much imprecision in commercial applications such as hair dyes and what some call some sort of auburn, others might list as some variation of burgundy, brown, chestnut, copper, hazel, henna, russet, rust or titian.

The term “medieval scholar” is not of course oxymoronic though the language is replete with errors of translation and misunderstandings replicated and re-enforced over a thousand-odd years.  However, as English began to assume its recognizably modern form, nor were errors unknown and it does seem strange such a well-documented Latin word as alburnus (fair-haired, literally “like white or whitish”) which had evolved in Middle English as auburne could be conflated with the Middle English broune & brun (brown), leading eventually to the modern auburn having morphed from blonde to a range of reddish browns.  Some etymologists however suggests it was deliberate, the late fifteenth century blond being preferred while auburne was re-purposed to where it could be more useful in the color-chart.  The modern blond & blonde were from the Old French & Middle French blund & blont (blond, light brown, feminine of blond) thought most likely of Germanic origin and related to the Late Latin blundus (yellow) from which Italian picked up biondo and Spanish gained blondo.  It was akin to the Old English blondenfeax (gray-haired), derived from the Classical Latin flāvus (yellow) and in Old English, there was also blandan (to mix).  There exists an alternative etymology which connects the Frankish blund (a mixed color between golden and light-brown) to the Proto-Germanic blundaz (blond), the Germanic forms derived from the primitive Indo-European bhlnd (to become turbid, see badly, go blind) & blend (blond, red-haired)).  If so, it would be cognate with the Sanskrit bradhná (ruddy, pale red, yellowish).  In his dictionary (1863-1873), Émile Littré (1801–1881) noted the original sense of the French word was "a color midway between golden and light chestnut" which might account for the notion of "mixed."  In the Old English beblonden meant "dyed," so it is a possible root of blonde and the documentary record does confirm ancient Teutonic warriors were noted for dying their hair.

However the work of the earlier French lexicographer, Charles du Fresne (1610-1688), claimed that blundus was a vulgar pronunciation of Latin flāvus (yellow) but cited no sources.  Another guess, and one discounted universally by German etymologists, is that it represents a Vulgar Latin albundus from the Classical Latin alba & albus (white).  The word came into English from Old French where it had masculine and feminine forms and the English noun imported both, thus a blond is a fair-haired male, a blonde a fair-haired female and even if no longer a formal rule in English, it’s an observed convention.  As an adjective, blonde is now the more common spelling and can be applied to both sexes, a use once prevalent in the US although most sources note the modern practice is to refer to women as blonde and men as fair.  Even decades ago, style guides on both sides of the Atlantic maintained, to avoid offence, it was better to avoid using blond(e) as a stand-alone noun-descriptor of women.

Paintings by Titian (left to right), Portrait of a Lady (circa 1511), National Gallery, London, Flora (1515), Uffizi Gallery, Florence, St Margaret and the Dragon (circa 1559) Museo del Prado, Madrid & Portrait of a Lady in White (circa 1561), Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden.

Even the understanding of auburn as “reddish brown” or “golden brown” has changed over the years.  The Venetian painter Tiziano Vecellio (circa 1490-1576 and known in English usually as Titian) lent the name “titian auburn” to the tint of reddish-brown hair which appeared so often in his work.  As so often happens in art, his output darkened as he aged so the term “titian auburn” as a literal descriptor of a particular tincture needs to be understood as a spectrum.  While his fondness for redheads seems not to have diminished with age, the vivid hues which characterized the flowing locks he favored in his youth were later sometimes rendered in more subdued tones.

Lindsay Lohan illustrates the shift from the Latin alburnus to the modern English Auburn.

(1) Alburnus as a Roman would have understood the description; now called blond or blonde depending on context.

(2) The classical understanding of “titian auburn”, a light and vivid shade reddish-brown.

(3) A more cooper-tinged hue, representative of what the hair-dye industry would call something like “light auburn”.

(4) This is a dark alburn; any darker and depending on the tint, it would be described either as burgundy or chestnut.

The Auburn Speedster

1935 Auburn 851 SC Speedster.

Under a variety of corporate structures, the Auburn company produced cars in the US between 1900-1937 and is remembered now for the Speedster 851 & 852, one of the most romantic designs of the mid-1930s.  Although Auburn, along with its corporate stablemates Cord and Duesenberg, succumbed to the affects of the Great Depression, the company’s financial problems long-predated the 1929 Wall Street crash, the conglomerate of the three manufacturers assembled in 1925 as a restructuring.  After this, in the growing economy of the 1920s Auburn began again to prosper and it was in 1925 the company introduced the model which would be the basis of the later 851 & 852.  Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg (A-C-D) actually enjoyed a logical structure in that the brand-names existed at different price points but it lacked any presence in the low-cost mass-market, relying instead on lower volume vehicles which relied on their style, engineering and value for money for their appeal.  Had the depression not happened, the strategy might have worked but, given the austerity of the 1930s, what’s remarkable is that A-C-D endured until 1937.             

1932 Auburn 12-160.  The color is said to be a 1932 factory option and is similar to the apple green with which Duesenberg painted their 6.9 litre (420 cubic inch) straight-eights.

Although now celebrated for their stylish lines, A-C-D’s cars were at the time also noted for innovation and the quality of their engineering.  Cord’s front-wheel-drive proved a cul-de-sac to which US manufacturers wouldn’t for decades return but other aspects of their designs were influential although A-C-D’s trademark quixotic offerings sometimes suggested a sense of disconnection from economic reality; in 1932, in the depth of the depression, Auburn announced a model powered by a 391 cubic inch (6.5 litre) V12, a perhaps questionable approach in an environment which had seen demand collapse for the twelve and sixteen cylinder Lincolns, Packard and Cadillacs.  Elegant and powerful, in less troubled times it would likely have succeeded but was wholly unsuited to the world into which it was released despite being priced from an extraordinary US$1,105; while that was 40% more than even the most expensive Ford V8, it was a fraction the cost of the more comparable Packard or Lincoln V12.

1936 Auburn 852 SC Speedster.

The Boattail Speedster was less ambitious but had already carved its niche.  It was designed in 1928 to create the signature product that encapsulated what A-C-D wished the Auburn marque to represent: fast, sleek, stylish and a value for money no other could match; had the company anticipated the slogan “grace, space & pace” it would have been well understood for what is now called a mission statement was exactly what made Jaguar such a success in the post-war years.  Using Lycoming's smooth, powerful and reliable straight-eight cylinder engine, sleek Speedster delivered the performance the lines promised, a genuine 100 mph (160 km/h) roadster which set speed records when taken to Daytona Beach.  The Speedster’s classic iteration was the 851 (the subsequent 852 all but identical), introduced in 1934, the design clearly a homage to the much-admired (if infrequently purchased) Duesenberg Weymann Speedster though where the Duesenberg was long and elegant, the Auburn was squat and sporty and for those who wanted something more charismatic still, the 280 cubic inch (4.6 litre) straight-eight could be ordered with a Schwitzer-Cummins centrifugal supercharger.  The market responded to the speed and the art deco style but the investment had been considerable, something the under-capitalized A-C-D undertook only because the improving economy provided some confidence sales would be sufficient to ensure profitability.  Had the recovery been sustained, A-C-D may have survived, unemployment in 1937 still high but significantly lower in the demographic which was their target market.  As in was, in mid-1937, the US economy suffered a sudden, sharp, recession which would last over a year, the effects lingering until late 1940 when the combined effected of increased armaments production and a presidential election had a simulative effect.  A-C-D, its finances in a perilous state since the Wall Street Crash, couldn’t survive and the companies all entered bankruptcy, Auburn succumbing in 1937.

A-C-D’s fate provides a cautionary tale which for decades was often ignored by those unable to resist the siren call to make beautiful, fast cars bearing their name.  Unless volumes were sufficient (thereby diluting the lure of exclusivity which tended to be much of the attraction) or else subsidized by the profits of some mass-market offering, enduring success was rare and few of those which did initially flourish were capitalized to the extent necessary to survive the inevitable downturns which disproportionally affects those depending on the more self-indulgent sectors sustained by discretionary expenditure.