How can I get the closest color word for a hex color?

Question

Say I have a color like #7B0D40. Are there any tools out there to output the nearest human-understandable word for that color? (Like #7B0D40 ~= Magenta?) I know there's ways to search the words used in CSS to describe explicit hex values for example, but I'd love to be able to take out an organically selected color and quickly get a descriptive name for the approximate color.Do any tools exist to quickly estimate a specific, human readable term for a color given an explicit hex/other color value?Quick human apraisals of what a color are usually result in uselessly vague terms like "blue" or "red" instead of "Azure" or "Magenta", so "just eyeball it" isn't enough IMO.

Answer 1

I'm afraid something like this doesn't quite exist yet. It would be quite the undertaking to assign over 16 Million possible hexadecimal colors a word value, even when lumping thousands of them together under certain terms. Not impossible, but it presents quite a lot of problems for any person or team who would think to achieve this. The fact that we currently have 140 unique HTML color names is no small feat, honestly.

You really may be just better off using HTML color names as a sort of 'close-enough' guide.

My only other suggestion is maybe using Pantone's color system, but only a certain amount of their colors have memorable names assigned to them that aren't just codes or vague terms like 'Purple C'. They do have an online color picking tool, one that also lets you use your own hex code to pull up Pantone colors. (https://www.pantone.com/color-finder#/convert?pantoneBook=all)

Wikipedia also has this list of colors pulled from a few sources, but no really accurate way to search the hex codes in any meaningful way. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colors:_A%E2%80%93F)

It would be very cool to have a tool like you're describing. It could make a lot of client interactions much easier. 😅