[user24]

The trouble with these names is that you have things like #7a937d comes up as Xanadu. And there are other weird names in there like "Blanched Almond" and "Bubble gum" which are fine if everyone knows you're talking about a colour, but if you're trying to build, say, an image tagging script you don't really want "bubble gum" being put as the tag instead of "pink".

[Gauth]

As explained in the article, you need to choose the dataset that fits your needs. And you're right, a smaller dataset with more common names will be more useful in some cases.

[daltonlp]

You may want to try using the colr.org API:

http://www.colr.org/api.html

The entire colr.org dataset isn't available, but you can make ajax requests for individual hex values, typically in less than 100ms.

The dataset should also include the standard CSS and HTML color names. This was part of the initial buildout several years ago.

[dazmax]

You should try it with the xkcd color dataset.

http://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/