Lost at Sea

#8d9ca7

A neutral that has no useful hue — it reads as a grey. It is light — black text sits on it comfortably, white text does not.

Hex

#8d9ca7

RGB

141, 156, 167

OKLCh

68.4% 0.024 239.6°

CIELAB (D50)

63.4, -3.8, -7.7

What is true of this colour, and of no other

10 other named colours sit within ΔE00 2 of it — this part of the space is crowded, and the names here are finer distinctions than most people make.
It uses only 15% of the chroma available at this lightness and hue — there is a far more vivid version of this colour inside sRGB.
As text on white it measures APCA Lc 54.2; on black, Lc -47.6. The sign is the polarity, which the WCAG ratio discards.
Built into an eleven-step scale, 10 of the 10 adjacent pairs stay ΔE00 2 apart — see the ramp.
protanopia and deuteranopia and tritanopia shift it by ΔE00 7.5 and 8.0 and 13.9 — no red cone.

Text on this colour

White text

2.82:1 — fails AA

Black text

7.45:1 — passes AA

Black text is the better of the two at7.45:1. That is enough for body text.

As text on white, it needs to change

#6a7983 is the nearest colour of the same hue that passes AA on white, at 4.50:1. Only the lightness moved.

Try it against your own background

The same colour, with one cone missing

As you see it

#8d9ca7

protanopia

#9a9aa7 · ΔE00 7.5

deuteranopia

#9898a7 · ΔE00 8.0

tritanopia

#9595c9 · ΔE00 13.9

Run a whole palette through all three

The twelve nearest named colours

Ranked by CIEDE2000 — perceptual distance, not hex arithmetic. The closest isHamilton Blue at ΔE00 0.963: below 1.0 — an ordinary observer cannot tell these apart, even side by side. What the numbers mean.

Hamilton BlueΔE00 0.963 · #8a99a4
ThundercatΔE00 1.082 · #8a99a3
Maritime HushΔE00 1.201 · #8b9ba4
LakefrontΔE00 1.417 · #8b9ca5
Gorgeous GraphiteΔE00 1.554 · #8d9ba9
Frilled SharkΔE00 1.633 · #939fa9
Canadian LakeΔE00 1.635 · #8f9aa4
Teton BlueΔE00 1.74 · #8d99a1
Relaxing BlueΔE00 1.799 · #899daa
Stormy SkiesΔE00 1.983 · #90a1aa
Wet SealΔE00 2.109 · #8a96a0
Overcast DayΔE00 2.125 · #8f99a2

12 of these have no page of their own: pages exist for the 4,961 colours the dataset marks as good names.