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.
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!!!
I already knew this about colors (it's also why "redheads" have orange hair) but I recently dug more into how the musical spectrum and how tones are defined is very similar in it's cultural variance. Another thing is how the cardinal directions are divided radially and how time is counted. Shit counting bases even, most of the imperial measurements are based on either base 12 or base 16 math.
Wild to think that something you grew up with as a fundamental fact of the world might actually be super culturally subjective.
The Japanese part of this is evidenced by the fact that some traffic lights are blue rather than green. As far as I know, they are standardizing everything to green now to avoid any confusion, but some older lights are still blue because the words were the same for blue and green.
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.
So you're implying that Middle Persian '*Kaf kōf' is halfway the same as Mycenaean Greek 𐀀𐀯𐀹𐀊 'a-si-wi-ja' or /aswijaː/? Do you have any evidence to support your claim?
That's only because the wine is whitish. Nobody calls the grapes themselves white. And she squeeze the juice out the juice isn't the same color as the skin. I've never heard anyone refer a grapes as white grapes
US. When I go to my local grocery store, they're categorized under white or red.
At least for white, that is indeed how the English Wikipedia classifies different grape cultivars, even ones that aren't intended to make wine. Black is new to me though.
Might just be that my grocery store is real local and they do it differently. I try to avoid large chains. But I've always understood white and red to be the technical classifiers of grapes, and the actual color you see with your eyes varies.
I'm also from a wine-producing region, so maybe that has something to do with it as well.
Never heard about green grapes. Here in Germany they are called "white grapes" and EN-Wikipedia is also calling them that in english. We are also talking it "white wine" and so on.
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.
Yeah, that's the part I have trouble with. Leaves are green, the sky is blue. They are very different colours. It's not ambiguous like whether teal or turquoise is green or blue (I could easily see either of those being labelled as either blue or green), or different shades of the same colour like fuscia or maroon. They are different primary colours of light.
It's just weird to me that two very common every day colours that don't look anything alike wouldn't get distinct names. I understand that the blue photoreceptors we have are the newest ones and are less sensitive than the red and green ones, but I wouldn't have figured that our evolution of it to the point where we see what we currently see (if you aren't colour blind) would have been that recent. I expected hundreds of thousands of years, not tens of thousands or just thousands, which is what it would need to be to explain cultures that didn't differentiate between the two until recently.
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.
I've always hated the "blue, indigo, violet" end of the English words for the rainbow. I only recently found out that the 7 colours of the rainbow in English is especially BS.
At the beginning of Newton's time, there were thought to be 5 colours in the rainbow: red, yellow, green, blue and violet. Newton added Orange and Indigo because he thought (for spiritual reasons) there should be 7 colours. There were 7 days of the week, 7 planets (known at that time), 7 notes in the (western) musical scale, etc.
But, Newton's blue isn't our blue today. For newton, the colour "blue" is what we currently call "cyan", so the 7 colours of the rainbow were really red, orange, yellow, green, cyan (blue), blue (indigo) and violet. That makes a lot more sense.
But, there really could be arbitrarily many colours in the rainbow. We could have "rust" as a colour, in between red and orange, or "gold" in between orange and yellow. We could even have a spectrum that didn't include "green" but included "lime" which is between today's yellow and green, and cyan on the other side, and no "green" at all.
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.
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.
If thats the US (southern drawal accent-typing).. No they arent. Spanish onions are vadalia onions that arent grown specifically in Vadalia, Georgia. Theyre the "sparkling wine, not champagne" of onions
many more foods are described as blue in southern Germany. Notably, blue onions, blue grapes, and blue cabbage
I grew up in southern Germany and have never heard anyone call those things blue. I've heard of Blaukraut from the tongue twister and been told that it's a different word for Rotkohl but that's it.
124 replies
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.
Or the red squirrel, which is brown.
And red hair.
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.
Yes, the word for greenery/foliage, 青葉, translates to "blue leaves"
Also the green traffic light is called blue
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!!!
And baby powder is never powdered babies!
I was similarly let down.
Oh shit! Shouldn't have made my own. Although it is quite good sprinkled on my salad...
In Hungary, we have a dessert called madártej, or bird milk. It's made out of cow milk.
I already knew this about colors (it's also why "redheads" have orange hair) but I recently dug more into how the musical spectrum and how tones are defined is very similar in it's cultural variance. Another thing is how the cardinal directions are divided radially and how time is counted. Shit counting bases even, most of the imperial measurements are based on either base 12 or base 16 math.
Wild to think that something you grew up with as a fundamental fact of the world might actually be super culturally subjective.
Obligatory: https://youtu.be/gMqZR3pqMjg
The Japanese part of this is evidenced by the fact that some traffic lights are blue rather than green. As far as I know, they are standardizing everything to green now to avoid any confusion, but some older lights are still blue because the words were the same for blue and green.
For bonus points, terms for colors are developed differently but similarly in separate languages: see e.g. ‘Color term’.
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
Yeah, but you cannot convince me that watermellons are not red.
That's a different variety than my local grocers. Stores near me, the papery outside it brown the red flesh you see there is dark purple for us.
in hungarian it's purple onion, you just choose the wrong language :)
At least we aren't hungary all the time
also, take my upvote
in portuguese too
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".
So you're implying that Middle Persian '*Kaf kōf' is halfway the same as Mycenaean Greek 𐀀𐀯𐀹𐀊 'a-si-wi-ja' or /aswijaː/? Do you have any evidence to support your claim?
Grapes don't make wine, silly. They're inert.
Source?!
"the
ballsgrapes are inert"Table grapes have learned from the chameleon.
when i say "red grapes," i'm always referring to the ones that are actually red because they have the most satisfying snap when you eat them.
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?
That's only because the wine is whitish. Nobody calls the grapes themselves white. And she squeeze the juice out the juice isn't the same color as the skin. I've never heard anyone refer a grapes as white grapes
In English, grapes are green or red.
Wine is not a grape. White wine and red wine refers to the color of the wine. Nobody calls vodka golden because it came from a potato.
Which part of the world are you from? I'm in Canada, and we call them green grapes and red grapes
https://www.safeway.com/shop/aisles/fruits-vegetables/fresh-fruits/grapes.html?sort=&page=1&loc=3132
Meanwhile Wikipedia notes '"Black" (dark blue) and "white" (light green) table grapes'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grape
US. When I go to my local grocery store, they're categorized under white or red.
At least for white, that is indeed how the English Wikipedia classifies different grape cultivars, even ones that aren't intended to make wine. Black is new to me though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultana_(grape)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almeria_(grape)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italia_(grape)
Might just be that my grocery store is real local and they do it differently. I try to avoid large chains. But I've always understood white and red to be the technical classifiers of grapes, and the actual color you see with your eyes varies.
I'm also from a wine-producing region, so maybe that has something to do with it as well.
Never heard about green grapes. Here in Germany they are called "white grapes" and EN-Wikipedia is also calling them that in english. We are also talking it "white wine" and so on.
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
Huh, so Kentucky isn't the only place with bluegrass
I started thinking that it kind of makes sense as blue is not a common naturally occurring color and then I remembered the sky.
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
Yeah, that's the part I have trouble with. Leaves are green, the sky is blue. They are very different colours. It's not ambiguous like whether teal or turquoise is green or blue (I could easily see either of those being labelled as either blue or green), or different shades of the same colour like fuscia or maroon. They are different primary colours of light.
It's just weird to me that two very common every day colours that don't look anything alike wouldn't get distinct names. I understand that the blue photoreceptors we have are the newest ones and are less sensitive than the red and green ones, but I wouldn't have figured that our evolution of it to the point where we see what we currently see (if you aren't colour blind) would have been that recent. I expected hundreds of thousands of years, not tens of thousands or just thousands, which is what it would need to be to explain cultures that didn't differentiate between the two until recently.
There are blue flowers
You mean those green flowers?
-ancient Greek guy (probably)
Cant have pesants eating royal onion now can we?
Because the dry outer skin is a rich red colour
... No? It's still typically a shade of purple...
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
It refers to the communism of the onions
Like ogres?
We're all pink on the inside
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.
We call them purple in Spanish... English has brain damage as per usual.
That's weird, I would have thought you'd call them morado in Spanish.
According to someone up thread, it's morada, so I'm guessing onions are female in Spanish?
I love them but they make me cry so this checks out.
It wanted to be associated with the proletariat not the ruling class.
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.
I've always hated the "blue, indigo, violet" end of the English words for the rainbow. I only recently found out that the 7 colours of the rainbow in English is especially BS.
At the beginning of Newton's time, there were thought to be 5 colours in the rainbow: red, yellow, green, blue and violet. Newton added Orange and Indigo because he thought (for spiritual reasons) there should be 7 colours. There were 7 days of the week, 7 planets (known at that time), 7 notes in the (western) musical scale, etc.
But, Newton's blue isn't our blue today. For newton, the colour "blue" is what we currently call "cyan", so the 7 colours of the rainbow were really red, orange, yellow, green, cyan (blue), blue (indigo) and violet. That makes a lot more sense.
But, there really could be arbitrarily many colours in the rainbow. We could have "rust" as a colour, in between red and orange, or "gold" in between orange and yellow. We could even have a spectrum that didn't include "green" but included "lime" which is between today's yellow and green, and cyan on the other side, and no "green" at all.
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.
The skin of red onions is reddish to purple. The flesh is purple much like shallots. But the skin sets them apart.
I'm crying
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.
The inside is purple, but the outside is red, especially if it's dry.
McCarthyism
What does that make yellow onions?
I could tell you, but then I would sound racist
If you hold a yellow onion and a white onion side by side, it's actually yellow(ish)
I've found the color in a things name usually points to what color dye you can extract from it.
Calm down... calm down... Perhaps consider putting the onions aside and trying a nice parsnip.
Same reason they call the tree a "Redbud tree."
Barely literate settlers were colonizing and writing home about the beautiful
PuplePrulePurlpleLavendaarRed-Bud Trees.Wait till they find out that some cultures didn't have separate words for green and blue
Purple is just an up jump red aimed at royalty
Nobody tell them about red cabbage
I AM AN ADULT!
Sorry to hear, me too... lets do taxes
An orange is about the only thing correctly named
Yeah that'll happen when you name the colour after the fruit.
Blueberry 🫐
Am I a fucking joke to you?
They're pretty purple a lot of the time tho
We call em Spanish Onions round these parts
That's whack. Spanish Onions refer to something completely different in most places.
https://therustyspoon.com/spanish-onions/
If thats the US (southern drawal accent-typing).. No they arent. Spanish onions are vadalia onions that arent grown specifically in Vadalia, Georgia. Theyre the "sparkling wine, not champagne" of onions
Australia
Because calling them blue onions would be weird.
isn't that what they call them in germany
No. We call them red too
https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/05/27/cultural-difference-color-and-the-onion/
I grew up in southern Germany and have never heard anyone call those things blue. I've heard of Blaukraut from the tongue twister and been told that it's a different word for Rotkohl but that's it.
I 100% believe you I just know I heard it somewhere - I think I was watching a YouTube cooking show and they referred to it as blue
Because purple isn't a colour
It's the absence of colour your brain cannot interpret so it makes a purple.
I doubt whoever named it knew that though
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/
Yet purple finches clearly are red
We're not white on the Inside, so why should a red onion have to be red all the way through