So if this is really true, I wonder how we should name colors for maximum usefulness? For instance, which set of names will help us tell colors apart better, "red orange yellow green blue violet" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Color_star-en.svg) from the RYB color model, or "red yellow green cyan blue magenta" (the six labeled angles on http://www.had2know.com/images/hsv-color-model.png) from the RGB model?
I suppose, for one thing, that it depends on whether we want to describe colors we often see in life (lots of blue sky, not many purple things) or the spectrum of colors evenly for looking at art.
As you might imagine, the print industry put in a lot of research over the course of the 20th century to ensure that e.g. Coca-Cola's cans come out the same color no matter which factory makes them. As such there are a number of mathematical models, called absolute color spaces, that can be said to name any given color within its gamut precisely. Adobe RGB and sRGB are two that are RGB based.
A different way of doing it are systems like Pantone that has no particular mathematical model; Pantone basically numbers swatches according to some arcane formula and can work with you to precisely reproduce any color you happen to want. If you want a color that isn't represented in their swatches they'll just add another one to the end of the list and do something horribly complex behind the scenes so they can tell you, or more likely your ink vendor, what to look for and what an acceptable color match is. These swatches are frequently named as well as numbered; somewhere on that list is Coca-Cola red, and you don't get to use it. This leads into a bunch of very strange IP law issues that I am not in any way able to talk about knowledgeably.
CIELAB and CIEXYZ are reference color spaces designed to encompass every color an average human can see, and these can be used to define the above standards. CIELAB is probably the best known of these. One of the odder things about CIELAB is that there are colors in gamut for it that no human can see (for example, a color that stimulates only the medium wavelength cone cells).
As a matter of professional practice people who care about this use Pantone PMS references. Photographers, particularly digital ones, tend to just use sRGB or Adobe RGB and look at you funny when you talk about Lab spaces. And virtually no one else cares enough to distinguish between pinkish red and reddish pink in a formal way.
I used to work for Sun Microsystems a very long time ago, and I remember that there was a Pantone colour called Sun Violet or something that was "the" colour you should use in all logos.
I suppose, for one thing, that it depends on whether we want to describe colors we often see in life (lots of blue sky, not many purple things) or the spectrum of colors evenly for looking at art.