If you go to http://colorschemedesigner.com/ and hit "Random > Randomize Palette" you'll see that most colors in a theme/palette could be categorized like this:
Good advice and I do for non-color related variables.
I guess its hard for me to put names on 3-6 colors that are used in various places on the site. This is probably just because I don't have a good idea going in where I'll be using these colors and I end up using them in places that don't apply to the name given.
For instance, I'll name a variable "background_color" and then I'll want to use it somewhere unrelated.
Don't waste time on this. The easy answer is "choose your names semantically", but that's easier said than done. In the end, your users don't care if your variable is named "blue", "color1", or "color_used_to_represent_user_likes_something"
Semantic markup and CSS is something to strive for, but don't kill yourself trying to get to 100%
Anybody have a method they feel good about and would like to share?