Captain Color Beard

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Probably as a result of infamous sailors like Blackbeard and Barbarossa, it's popular to give pirate or nautical characters names that reference their facial hair—and not just sailors, either.

Despite the title, the beard name isn't restricted to names based around colors, or even necessarily beards (you'll see names like "Captain Blackheart" or "Captain Deadeye" about as often, and of course there's Captain Hook).

See also Father Neptune and Seadog Beard.

Examples of Captain Color Beard include:

Anime and Manga

• Whitebeard and Blackbeard from One Piece. Also Brownbeard, a Small Name, Big Ego trying to invoke this trope simply by naming himself after his facial hair, piggybacking on the hype of those with a similar name. Ironically, due to Japanese not having a separate word for "beard", both Blackbeard and Whitebeard sport mustaches... but lack actual beards. "White Facial Hair" doesn't flow as well.
  • Well, Blackbeard has now grown a small one nowadays.
  • The name "Whitestache" is still pretty awesome.
  • Spain's dub actually retconed Whitebeard's name to "Albino Mustache" so it worked better. The manga keeps on calling him "Whitebeard" despite him, obviously, lacking a beard.
  • We also have "Red-Haired" Shanks and his Red Haired Pirates.
• In Amagi Brilliant Park, Captain Ironbeard is a Pirate walrus with a crew of seals. His "beard" is actually a couple of genuinely iron throwing blades somehow attached to his face as a mustache until he gives the right snapping movement of his head.

Comic Books

• Barbe Rouge (Red Beard), the French comic series.
  • Parodied in Asterix.
• The Subway Pirates of Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers. The ones we see are the slick, hairless Nobeard and the gruff, fur-faced Allbeard, but mention is made of other, older captains like Falsebeard.
• She-Beard from Seaguy.
• Parodied with Captain Wackbeard in Deadpool: X Marks The Spot. He shoots anyone who uses that name.
• According to one Silver Age story Jimmy Olsen is a descendant of Greenbeard Olsen; a buccaneer from the 1700s. Over the course of the story, Jimmy suffers from a curse whereby he assumes Greenbeard's personality under a full moon. A summary of the story can be read here.
• In one Golden Age story, Batman fights a one-shot villain called Blackbeard, who styles himself after the historical Blackbeard (see Real Life below).

Film

• Yellowbeard
• Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean films, rather surprisingly, narrowly averted this. Hector Barbossa was named "Captain Blackheart" in early drafts of the script, but his name eventually was changed to something less Narm-inducing.
  • However, in the upcoming fourth movie Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides the antagonist is the original captain Blackbeard.
  • And Barbossa is based on Barbarossa, which means red-beard. Even though his beard isn't red.
  • Barbossa can also be read as latin for "Bony Beard", which makes it a hidden example of both this and Meaningful Name.

Folklore and Mythology

• Averted with "Bluebeard", who is, shockingly, not a pirate. Just a serial killer.

Literature

• Firebeard (an Expy of Blackbeard) is one of the pirate kings in The Pyrates.
• Marauders of Gor has Ivar Forkbeard, who is a Viking outlaw pirate.
• In the Hoka story "Yo Ho Hoka!", the main character dons a false green beard as a disguise and ends up as the Pirate Captain Greenbeard.
• In one of the later Angelique historical novels by Anne Golon, a former lover of the title character turns up as a pirate now using the name Goldbeard. Too bad Angelique has been reunited with her husband....
• In The Martian, Mark Watney concludes that commandeering rovers and other space hardware without permission makes him a "space pirate", and when he shares his conclusion with NASA, he demands they address him as "Captain Blondbeard".

Live Action TV

• Blackadder has Redbeard Rum. And the beard is all that's left of him after the cannibals are finished.
• Conan: The episode where Will Ferrel shaved Conan O'Brien was titled "The Last Stand of Redbeard."
• Captain Bluebear. That's Captain Bluebear in English.
• In the MythBusters pirate special, Adam's pirate name is Redbeard the Savage.
• Yellowbeard, recurring Monty Python character, who finally managed to get his own movie. Sort of.
• One early Barney and Friends episode had a character named Rainbow Beard the Pirate, who sends Barney and the kids on a color and shape themed treasure hunt.

Tabletop Games

• Munchkin Booty, a pirate-themed set, has a whole series of Captain Colorbeards, including Greenbeard (who's an anime character), Fatbeard (who's a geek), and Nobeard (who's a woman).
  • And don't forget Redbeard, who is a communist. If you run into him and the Red Herring at the same time, trouble is afoot (apegleg?).
• The Ravenloft setting included a domain lord named Bluebeard who, unlike the namesake fairytale character on which he is based, actually does have a blue beard.

Toys

• In a LEGO Pirates line, there was a Pirate-captain figure referred to in the literature as "Redbeard."
  • LEGO Rock Band has a pirate minifig called Gingerbeard; his description cites the name as an improvement over the alternative, "Strawberry-Blonde-Beard".

Video Games

• The Monkey Island series has Yellow Beard (who had a drink named after him in Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge) and Blonde Beard (who runs a fried chicken restaurant on Plunder Island in The Curse of Monkey Island).
• Admiral Razorbeard from Rayman 2.
• The Bonus Boss Deadbeard in Golden Sun.
• No-Beard from Reality-On-The-Norm.
• Captain Greenbeard from Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island.
• Thinbeard of Jays Journey, who has no visible beard at all.
• Donkey Kong Country Returns: The leader of the Scurvy Crew is named Captain Greenbeard.
• There's a fan-made custom map for Minecraft titled "The Treasure of Captain Rainbowbeard".

Web Comics

• William Shakespeare as seen in Irregular Webcomic daydreams of being a pirate called "Shakesbeard"
• Rusty and Co has Plaidbeard the pirate. Beat that.
• Pitch Black has Captain Hempbeard "The High Pirate". How he remains the Captain, you ask? Well, he got a very efficient way of dealing with the mutinies... [1] [2] [3][4] [5] [6] [7]

Western Animation

• Stickybeard from Kids Next Door (Also his Spanish name literally translates as "Sweetbeard").
• Redbeard in the "Go Away, Ghost Ship" episode of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
• South Park mocked this with the episode "Fatbeard", Cartman's pirate name.
• Phineas and Ferb: "The Ballad of Badbeard".
• When Lisa is researching the family history in The Simpsons episode "The Color Yellow", hoping to discover a Simpson in her family tree that was not an alcoholic, criminal, or sexual fetishist, one of the newspaper articles refers to "Bart-Beard the Pirate".
• An episode of the Where's Waldo cartoon featured a pirate named "Pegbeard", who had a peg-leg on his chin with tufts of hair coming out of it. Mention is also made of a "Captain Peg-Neck" who had an ill-fated encounter with some termites.
• The Futurama episode "A Bicyclops In Love" has a statue of the cyclopean Purplebeard the Pirate, Scourge of the Six Seas. Of course, given the way the episode turns out, he almost certainly never actually existed, and even if he did he wasn't a cyclops.
• In one of the many Scooby Doo films, Pirates Ahoy!, we have.... Captain Skunkbeard.
  • Also, from one of the main episodes, we have Redbeard the Pirate, who provides the picture above.
  • And in the Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated episode "The Grasp of the Gnome", Scooby uses the name 'Dogbeard" while dressed as a pirate.
• Parodied in the cartoon based on the British Dennis the Menace, with a series of paintings showing a family of pirates with names like these, ending in "Weirdbeard", whose beard was green with stuff sticking out of it.
• SpongeBob SquarePants has given us Blindbeard the Pirate, Longbeard the Pirate, and Redbeard the Pirate.

Real Life

• The aforementioned Blackbeard, aka Edward Teach.
• The Turkish privateer Oruc Reis, who went by the nickname Barbarossa or Redbeard.
• Many notable Vikings had colourful nicknames, among them Sweyn Forkbeard.
• The emperor Nero's family name was Ahenobarbus (Bronzebeard).
• Cookiebeard!
• The Holy Roman Emperor named Friedrich Barbarossa, who worked hard to live up to his reputation (until he died of a heart attack in Turkey by falling in an ice-cold river at the beginning of the Third Crusade...) Those Wacky Nazis named their invasion of Russia after him.
• The Barbarossa brothers, one an admiral and the other a privateer.