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Comment by eviks | Hacker News Reader

This is a fundamentally unworkable/misleading approach to naming. For example, these 3 reds are perceptually identical #ff0000, #fe0002, #ff0d00, yet they have different names, which is a waste of names and is worse than having hex-based names (where at least 0.0...1% of people would be able to mix the values in their head and a bigger 0.0..% would see that the difference is tiny), and much worse than having names that are based off Red with some modifier describing the tiny difference based on what it is (e.g., 1% lighter)

> When creating new color names, it's essential to understand which areas of a color space are crowded and where new names can be added

Indeed it is. It's also essential to not add names in those uber-crowded areas

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From the README, this is a collection of names, not a prescriptive proposal for definitive names. Walk over to your local hardware store's paint section and you'll see the same hundreds of names for off-white variations.

What's wrong with having different names for the same color?

It seems to me that you're thinking like a computer rather than like a human.

And to me it seems you're not thinking at all. Computers have no issue with extra names, it's the humans that are confused. Also you don't have "different names for the same color", e.g., red has a unique name "Red" and they've specifically deduplicated their data to have unique names-color combos. Why do you think that is?

There is no confusion at all. A normal person can perfectly well understand that a color can have several different names. The majority of people are at least bilingual.

You're confused, the understanding that multiple names can exist isn't relevant. But for you to understand that you'd need to think and try to answer my question that tried to steer you into the right direction.

People who are specialized and work with colors are better served by thinking in terms of how the colors are mixed and relate to each other. I do that, and probably you do too.

Normal people use color names, and there's practically no limit to how many different color names people can remember, especially since almost all come from real life objects. Salmon, spongecake, wine red, olive, neon pink, and so on. Having multiple names for the same or very similar colors is no problem, because there is no requirement for pinpoint accuracy when using names instead of numbers.

The color names people are giving in this project are however mostly low quality, and won't catch on anywhere. "Silent Breeze", "Energize" etc.

Have you talked to "normal people" about colors? They are notoriously bad at them and the limit of confusion is a rather low number, definitely orders of magnitude lower than 32k in this database.

> Having multiple names for the same or very similar colors is no problem.

Only if you dismiss clarity as a value "there is no requirement for pinpoint accuracy". At which point, though, what purpose does this database serve??? And again, this db is deduplicated, so it doesn't share your argument, hence it's legit highlighting where it falls short on deduplication.

> low quality "Silent Breeze"

that's a different fail, though not much different from other low quality real colors like Turquoise that did catch on

Most people can’t remember 256 color names. And that only covers eight-bit color. They might remember a few different names around common colors they use or like, but that’s about as far as they can go.

If you think you can remember the 100 different colors in the Munsell Color test, please go right ahead and tell me what they all are. Without consulting a computer, a chart, or the actual Munsell Color test samples, of course.

I took the Munsell Color test, and I passed it with 100% perfect accuracy. But I couldn’t name more than a half dozen colors that might have been in it.

Naming is one of the hardest problems in the world, and in computer science. Namespaces are also hard, for the same reason.

> Most people can’t remember 256 color names.

They would have no problem doing that if they had a good reason to. That wouldn't mean being able to exactly discern between two very similar colors.

To give a simple example: Teal / Turquoise / Cyan / Bluegreen / Mediterranean sea. That's 5 different names for what most people would consider the same color. Throw in Aquamarine and we have 6. Color names are imprecise and can only be imprecise. But they're also quite useful.

"Namespaces" aren't used by people, they're only used by computers.

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