Amber Alert: Color vs. Proper Name

So apparently the Amber Alert system was duly named because of a girl who was abducted before said system was enacted and activated (obviously named amber).

Yet every time I hear the phrase “Amber Alert”, my brain immediately associates it with the color amber. This may have come from the years of watching Star Trek episodes and hearing repeated calls for “Red Alert!”, “Yellow Alert!” and (rarely) “Blue Alert!”.

Would it be such a bad thing if we stopped associating this system with a child who was murdered in 1996? After all, the word AMBER is used as a backronym for "America's Missing: Broadcasting Emergency Response". Constantly bringing up past nightmares of murdered children isn't exactly what I'd call a great idea to notify the public of a present kidnapping.

Try to imagine this kind of thinking being applied to other alerts, such as threats against the president. Who wants to hear about a "Kennedy Alert"? Or how about when racial tension gets too high - an "MLK Alert"?

Putting together an alert that doesn't force everyone to remember death is a much better idea, and a much less depressing one at that.