Nathan is talking about naming schemes within each tier I mentioned, not different tiers. That blog is detailing naming schemes for the semantic and component layer.

The primitive/semantic/component set of tiers are a general practice. Naming within them heavily differs (and should!). The names you use for the individual tokens depend on goals and intent - ie Google’s material’s semantic layer uses a naming schema that’s designed for colorful variety of themes (albeit at the expense of clarity of how they should be used), whereas Apple uses a far more simplified naming schema since the design of their apps has far fewer design differences.

Not parent, but the generalization is true. There’s usually a base layer (red/300, etc) and a more semantic layer (.text-danger).

As your link covers, there’s then a million different ways to implement/extend that based on whatever theming and systems you’re implementing on top.