Gnome-shell's desktop is unusable with any light colored wallpaper as the icon names (also white) are unreadable. There doesn't seem to be anyway to change their color, changing various themes doesn't seem to help either.
Example:
After searching here and there to change the themes file, it seems I don't need to change anything in the theme to have this. In fact, It's not even possible without much hacking. Because Gnome Developers (for some reason only known to them) bundled most of the theme files in gresource binary file. The files in /usr/share/themes/Adwaita only for GTK-2 components. Gtk-3 files are in libgtk-3.so file and gnome-shell-theme.gresource file.
But finally I observed that the overridden file take effects actually, though it takes time.
You would override the theme. The content is same as given by Sillyman. The difference is, you write in gtk.css file in ~/.config/gtk-3.0 folder.
.nautilus-desktop.nautilus-canvas-item {
color: blue;
text-shadow: 1px 1px white;
}
Replace your favorite color in color field. You can even thicken the shadow by increasing the pixels.
But you need to wait some time. Try using another theme for a while after overriding it. You can also try killing nautilus using nautilus -q and starting it again.
Here is a screenshot after changing the font color in Adwaita.
Here is some useful links I visited about this problem. It may help future visitors.
