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)
in hungarian it's purple onion, you just choose the wrong language :)
Because they are only purple on the inside. Do you think apples are white? Or bananas?
Because the dry outer skin is a rich red colour
In Spanish we actually call them "cebolla morada" that means purple onion :D
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 refers to the communism of the onions
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.
why do we call green grapes white
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'm crying
The skin of red onions is reddish to purple. The flesh is purple much like shallots. But the skin sets them apart.
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.
McCarthyism
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.
We call them purple in Spanish... English has brain damage as per usual.
I AM AN ADULT!
Nobody tell them about red cabbage
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