Continuing the discussion from Easy way to rename colors:
When working on a colour palette I am often testing contrasts in the canvas view. I might be expanding the number of shades for a hue, or rationalising to tighten the system. Making round-trips to the component view to change variables names is interupting the flow of my work.
In the canvas we can rename text styles, we can rename layer styles, we can rename symbols, why not colour variables?