It wanted to be associated with the proletariat not the ruling class.
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.
It’s kind of wild when you learn that words for blue are relatively new in human language.
In Japanese it’s the reverse; ‘blue’ is used for blue and green; designating green as the different color is relatively recent for them
I started thinking that it kind of makes sense as blue is not a common naturally occurring color and then I remembered the sky.
There are blue flowers
You mean those green flowers?
-ancient Greek guy (probably)
A lot of old writing refers to the sky and the sea as green.
What color did they say the grass was?
Also green.
That’s funky
McCarthyism
What does that make yellow onions?
I could tell you, but then I would sound racist
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.
Because the dry outer skin is a rich red colour
Because they are only purple on the inside. Do you think apples are white? Or bananas?
Humans are red so why not?
Speak for yourself. I’m more mayonnaise colored
in hungarian it’s purple onion, you just choose the wrong language :)
in portuguese too
At least we aren’t hungary all the time
also, take my upvote
From what I know, it has to do with the word red covering the purple part of the spectrum long ago, and the “need” for the word purple came out later but purple things that were named red didn’t get renamed.
You can look at japanese right now and 青い covers both blue and green, with a relatively recent addition of 緑 to cover only green (thus possibly pushing 青い in the future to be only blue, who knows)
Similarly, the red fox is clearly orange, but English speakers were exposed to that species of fox before developing a word for that specific color. For bonus linguistical oddities, ‘orange’ was used for the fruit before it was used for the color.
And the fruit’s name is different from other countries’ names for it because “a naranj” was misheard as “an orange” and it stuck. Yellow-red wasn’t much adopted, though it did exist. Such is language, what a fun collective hallucination.
Or the red squirrel, which is brown.
And red hair.
Well whys it called Shepherds Pie when it doesnt contain shepherds, or Cottage Pie when its nothing to do with cottages or cottagimg? How about that one…checkmate!!!
In Hungary, we have a dessert called madártej, or bird milk. It’s made out of cow milk.
And baby powder is never powdered babies!
I was similarly let down.
Yes, the word for greenery/foliage, 青葉, translates to “blue leaves”
Also the green traffic light is called blue
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.
why do we call green grapes white
Or purple grapes red?
(I’m guessing due to the type of wine they make)
Don’t even get me started on ‘white’ people.
Meanwhile stupid USians subscribe to the literal 19th-century ‘scientific racism’ theory that has ‘Caucasian people’ as something other than deeply tan skin that Caucasian people actually have.
They also don’t look at the last half of the word too closely.
You mean the word ‘Caucasian‘? Sorry, but that’s probably unrelated to ‘Asia’. Folk etymology is fun, but always falls apart in practice.
Half the Caucasus mountains are in asia.
What Caucasus are you on about?
They mean etymologically. Asians are from Asia, not “Asus”.
Who calls green grapes white…?
Never heard that happen
two examples: white wine, white grape juice. both are very common. seems to refer to the juice color, not the color of the grape skins.
when they’re made into raisins, they’re called golden raisins. so “white” isn’t even the only one.
Might be different in other languages, but English usually divides grapes into red and white for color.
The fuck it does
White Wine
Pink balls
We’re talking about grapes?
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
Wait till they find out that some cultures didn’t have separate words for green and blue
We call them purple in Spanish… English has brain damage as per usual.
In Spanish we actually call them “cebolla morada” that means purple onion :D
I’m bilingual and I always forget which language calls it which, so I get confused looks from everyone.
JAJAJJAJAJAJJA yep it has happened to me
I spent way too much time sitting in the backseat looking out the window on long family drives wondering why the fuck they kept referring to the orange cheddar cheese as “yellow” cheese. Still kind of annoys me today after decades of getting older and settling down a bit.
Because ‘orange’ was covered by the word ‘yellow’ until that pesky fruit made it to England and became fashionable.