Class static members contributing to program memory footprint even if class is not used

In class I want to have constant array of constant C strings:

.cpp

const char* const  Colors::Names[] = {
    "red",
    "green"
    };

.h

class Colors {
public:
    static const char* const  Names[];
};

The array should be common to all instances of class Colors (even though I plan to have just one instance but it should not metter), hence declaring array static.

The requirment is that if class is not instantied, array should not consume any memory in binary file. However, with above solution, it does consume:

 .rodata._ZN6Colors5NamesE
                0x00000000        0x8 

not sure about C strings itself as cannot find them in a map file but I assume they consume memory as well.

I know that one solution to this would be to use constexpr and C++17 where is it no longer needed to have definition of static constexpr members outside of class. However, for some reasons (i.e. higher compilation times in my build system and slighlty higher program memory footprint) I don't want to change c++ standard version.

Another idea is to drop static (as I plan to have one instance anyway). However, the first issue with this solution is that I have to specify array size, which I would rather prefer not to do, otherwise I get:

error: flexible array member 'Colors::Names' in an otherwise empty 'class Colors'

Second issue is that array is placed in RAM section (inside class object), and only C strings are placed in FLASH memory.

Does anyone know other solutuions to this issue?

PS. My platform is Stm32 MCU and using GCC ARM compiler

EDIT (to address some of the answers in comments) As suggested in comments this can't be done with just static members. So the question should probably actually be: How to create (non-static) class array member, that's placed in read only memory (not initialized), which is placed in a memory only if the class is actually used in the program and preferably common for all instances of that class? Array itself is only used from that class.

Some background info: Let's say that array has size of 256, and each C string 40 chars. That's 1kB for array + 10kB for C strings (32 bit architecture). Class is a part of library that is used by different projects (programs). If the class is not used in that project then I don't want that it (and it's array) would occupy even a single byte beacuse I need that FLASH space for other things, therefore compresion is not an option.

If there will be no other solutions then I will consider possiblity of removing unused sections by linker (alothough was hoping for a simpler solution). Thanks for all suggestions.