Name color

Pirates have different colored names based on who/what they be:

White - Non-Player Pirates (NPPs), sometimes known as "bots," although "swabbies" is the preferred term. NPPs can respond in ways that seem human, especially if they're humans who are particularly impressed with the local island's rum. NPPs generally have two words in their names.

On rare occasion, white names which have only one word in them are used for special player-controlled characters.

Green - Greenies are players who have logged in for less than about fifteen hours across all oceans combined on their current account. It is possible for a greenie to be a subscriber. There are multiple shades of green. Completely new accounts start off with bright green names; accounts that approaching yellow status have yellow-green names.
Yellow - Players who have been logged in for about fifteen or more hours across all oceans combined.
Pink - On-duty volunteer greeters who assist greenies adjust and learn about the game. Only greenies, greeters, and ocean masters can see the Pink name while wandering around and using /who.
Blue - Ocean Masters and Developers. A retired Ocean Master can opt to retain a blue name.

Changing name colors

Greeters may change their name color from pink to yellow and vice versa using the /duty command. Shortly after release 2005-10-20, it was possible for an unsubscribed greeter to be seen swapping from a green to yellow name if seen through the eyes of a yellow-named pirate.
Ocean Masters have the power to change a player's name color to pink or white and back to yellow again.
If an on-duty Greeter has a white name, it overrides the pink name (making it semi-difficult to tell if said pirate is on-duty or not).