Standardized color names?

Question

I know the HTML specification 4.01 defines 16 color names, but I was wondering if there was any exhaustive specification (RFC?) for color names.

Answer 1

It's worth mentioning that the gold standard for color definition is Pantone. Any professional dealing with color in a real-world context will use the Pantone system at some point. It's commercial, proprietary and expensive, but if you ever deal with commercial or industrial color definition, be that graphical design, textiles, paint, publishing or many other things then you'll end up using Pantone. Not only does Pantone handle 'normal' colors but also oddities like metallics and fluorescents.

That aside, for coding purposes I generally reach for the X11 names as they are comprehensive enough for most purposes and widely used.

Answer 2

147 color names are defined in the HTML and CSS color specification (16 basic color names plus 130 more). The table below lists them all, along with their hexadecimal values.

The 16 basic color names are: aqua, black, blue, fuchsia, gray, green, lime, maroon, navy, olive, purple, red, silver, teal, white, and yellow.

You can find full list here: https://www.w3schools.com/colors/colors_names.asp

Or here: http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-color/#svg-color

Answer 3

I think there is not an official specification for color names, however CSS defines some color names, and so does X11.

Answer 4

Take a look at http://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/Color/Dictionaries, it lists several existing color names dictionaries.