Xjyuk

Recently, I have seen item names on servers and on this very website with odd characters preceding them. I was thinking "well, this changes everything!".

Can you make item name act like JSON text using this method? (i.e. any colour, bold, italic, obfuscated?)

Please list methods/preceders below.

Edit

What I am looking for is the colour of the item names, not sign block data or written books with coloured text. For example, when you go on a server, you often see items with coloured or obfuscated names.

You can use a sign to run a command containing the section symbol (disguised as unicode u00A7 because the actual "§" character cannot be typed in a command block), which formats the item's display name as desired. The following provides the player with a sign that, when right-clicked, provides the player with a stone that has an obfuscated name:

/give @p minecraft:sign 1 0 BlockEntityTag:Text1:""text":"","clickEvent":"action":"run_command","value":"/give @p minecraft:stone 1 0 display:Name:\"u00A7ru00A7kThis text is obfuscated.\"""

The formatting is reset first since it would otherwise be italic by default.

It is currently not possible (as of version 1.11) to colour the names of items using colour/formatting codes without the use of mods.

You can, however, use the formatting codes in conjunction with the § character to colour the text in books and quills.

A reference of all the colour/formatting codes can be found below:

+-------+------------------+
| Code | Effect |
+-------+------------------+
| §0 | Black |
| §1 | Dark Blue |
| §2 | Dark Green |
| §3 | Dark Aqua |
| §4 | Dark Red |
| §5 | Dark Purple |
| §6 | Gold |
| §7 | Gray |
| §8 | Dark Gray |
| §9 | Blue |
| §a | Green |
| §b | Aqua |
| §c | Red |
| §d | Light Purple |
| §e | Yellow |
| §f | White |
+-------+------------------+
| §k | Obfuscated |
| §l | Bold |
| §m | Strikethrough |
| §n | Underline |
| §o | Italic |
| §r | Reset formatting |
+-------+------------------+

Codes sourced from Minecraft Wiki

@FungusKing I would recommend using link as it will automatically generate signs, tellraws, books, etc. All you have to do is fill out the required fields.

There is a way to /give colored items in 1.12.2 (at least in spigot)

If you're a server administrator, you can spawn colored title items by using the § character in the console. You are able to write, or copy-paste this into the console. The windows alt-code is Alt-0167 (not sure about apple, sorry).

E.g. (from console)
give @p diamondsword 1 0 display:Name:"§cThis sword's name is light red!"

lol just copy and paste lol suckers!!!!11