These appeared while I was extricating the 3-axis positioner from an old project:
I’m reasonably sure those labels started with blue ink from my all-time favorite Ultra-Fine-Point Sharpie markers on address labels covered with ordinary matte tape. Fourteen years on, the X, Y, and Drive legends are pretty much indistinguishable.
Nothing lasts …
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
I have been using Black Sharpies for years and so far so good, it even holds up for quite a while for marking laundry but the fine print says “Not for Laundry.” There are also some wire markers that have a white section to write on and a clear over wrap when the label is wrapped around a wire.
The neat ones I liked at work were a print on shrink wrap, came in rolls.