So, this is kinda weird, but general colors didn’t have names for a long time. Like in Greek texts by Homer he describes the water color as dark wine color because the name “blue” wasn’t a word. So it’s possible when they named a “red onion” purple wasn’t a color and considered a shade of red.
Also as others have said purple was the color of royalty and they didn’t want an association.
Cant have pesants eating royal onion now can we?
There’s a joke in Bulgarian somewhat related to that. What’s commonly referred to as a prune plum we call something that roughly translates to “blue plum”. The joke goes something like this:
– Dad, what’s this?
– It’s a blue plum.
– Why is it red?
– Because it’s green.
Language is weird, but it’s ironic that our use of it makes it so.
Because they are only purple on the inside. Do you think apples are white? Or bananas?
Humans are red so why not?
in hungarian it’s purple onion, you just choose the wrong language :)
What really gets me is that the compounds responsible for this hue in food are called “anthocyanins” which means “blue flower.” I can’t even.
In Spanish we actually call them “cebolla morada” that means purple onion :D
Same reason they call the tree a “Redbud tree.”
Barely literate settlers were colonizing and writing home about the beautiful
PuplePrulePurlpleLavendaarRed-Bud Trees.Jess and Rob on Words Unraveled talk about color word origins, and their discussion is illuminating about the cultural variance in perception of color. Now I am at peace with all the seemingly weird color names for things.
For a quicker tour, Vox talks about the order that languages fill in color words as cultures begin to refine their distinction.
Purple is just an up jump red aimed at royalty
An orange is about the only thing correctly named
Blueberry 🫐
Am I a fucking joke to you?
They’re pretty purple a lot of the time tho
I don’t know if this has anything to do with it, but it’s a cool read nonetheless.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a71442895/purple-is-fake-research/
Nobody tell them about red cabbage
Because purple isn’t a colour
It’s the absence of colour your brain cannot interpret so it makes a purple.
Yet purple finches clearly are red
