Jut to put you rant in context, the CSS color names were not decided by CSS, they were adopted from presentational HTML.
The initial stage of CSS was to provide an alternative to presentational HTML (font tags, bgcolor attribute etc.) by supporting at least the equal presentational power in a style sheet language. Since HTML already had color names, CSS also needed them in order to allow easy porting of style information from HTML to CSS.
The initial stage of CSS was to provide an alternative to presentational HTML (font tags, bgcolor attribute etc.) by supporting at least the equal presentational power in a style sheet language. Since HTML already had color names, CSS also needed them in order to allow easy porting of style information from HTML to CSS.