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Sometimes a character component has one pronunciation as a Kangxi radical, another one as a stroke, and perhaps even more:
Which names are used in practice and understandable? Should I learn all the variants or only one of them?
Actually we only use the name ( the second ones in your question) which describes the shape of the radical. It's how teachers call these radicals in classroom. Many radicals, like 丶, are not treated as charterers. Although they may have a pronunciation, most Chinese don't know that. Even for these radicals which happen to be characters, we still incline to use the name referring to the radical, rather than its own pronunciation. It would sound ridiculous when you describe the strokes of a character, say 王 this way: 三个一，一竖. Instead, native speakers would say: 三横一竖.
横 (heng2) is its own character, as is 竖 (shu4). 一 and 丨are never pronounced as heng2 and shu4, but the shapes are referred to in context of discussing calligraphy, stroke order, etc.
Here's an analogy with the letter "o". Is it a circle? Yes. Do we ever read it as "circle"? No. But just like "o" is a circle-shaped letter, 一 is a 横-shaped character.
In terms of which words are used in practice and are understandable, either check out a dictionary or just ask a Chinese speaker how to pronounce the character. The first answer you find is likely to be the most common and useful. The secondary pronunciations, names of strokes/shapes, and even some of the characters themselves are not common in everyday language, and will only pop up in the context of calligraphy, linguistics, historical research, or some areas of law and science.
