Linking Caption - python extension in here which is using 'Table: ’ and 'Listing: ’ to identify captions. There is almost no chance of misinterpretation and it readily satisfies:
The overriding design goal for Markdown’s formatting syntax is to make it as readable as possible. The idea is that a Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions.