Convert hex color code to color name

Question

How can I translate a hex representation of a color to its corresponding name?

For example, consider the following colors:

rainbow(4)
# "#FF0000FF" "#80FF00FF" "#00FFFFFF" "#8000FFFF"

What are their names (hoping a name exist for each code)?

I discovered the function col2rgb() but it does not exaclty what I am needing.

Answer 1

You may use the convenience function color.id from the plotrix package*:

Given a color specified as a hex string, find the closest match in the table of known (named) colors.

library(plotrix)
sapply(rainbow(4), color.id)
# $`#FF0000FF`
# [1] "red"  "red1"
# 
# $`#80FF00FF`
# [1] "chartreuse"  "chartreuse1"
# 
# $`#00FFFFFF`
# [1] "cyan"  "cyan1"
# 
# $`#8000FFFF`
# [1] "purple"

---

*Credits to Jim Lemon and his answer here: Convert color hex code to color names.