See also: ‘robin red breast’ to describe the European robin, which very clearly has an orange breast:

Before that basically everything towards the magenta part of the spectrum was all just called red.

And before that we have people looking at colours entirely differently, like Homer calling the sea the colour of red wine.

Which my Greek teacher would explain by saying "my pencil is the the same shade of yellow as your book is blue".

It’s the same reason why ”Violets are blue”.

The concept of purple is older than English, though. I guess when English chose to adopt it is the main question, but should be clarified that the term where "purple" derives from goes back to the ancient Romans, who recognized it as a distinct color used for royalty given the difficulty in obtaining it.

It does have me wondering exactly when red onions first arrived in the UK, or what the Romans may have called it (potentially before those dirty Britons got their hands on it).

I also know that, when boiled, they yield a very rich, red color. Could maybe be named "red" due to that? Some Orthodox Christians/eastern Europeans traditionally use red onions to dye eggs for Easter.

I was always curious about this! I’m bilingual and I always get mixed up because they’re actually called “purple onions” in Spanish. I always forget which language calls it which, but knowing this is definitely helpful!

In Bangla, we call the color peyaji, which is basically "onion-y". It's also what we call onion fritters, and they're absolutely delicious.

Edit: Just remembered that we also use it as a slang for fucking around. Not sure where that came from lol.

Wasn't purple a "royal" colour back in Roman toga times? Maybe it was called something different?

Look, man, I'm not concerned with what middle earth or Mordor or whatever can see, I'm here on the planet U S of A.

Black tea refers to the visible degree of oxidation of the tea leaves - yellow, white and green teas all do the same thing. Similarly, white grapes are called that because they produce white (clear) liquid (though it's clearly yellowish so they should really be called yellow grapes...).

A black box is orange. A red panda is brown. A great white is mostly grey.

No need to insult them

Are you calling me a moron?!

Red onion skin is part of kids science experiments about PH. I just did that experiment with my kids not long ago.

That is not true?

Just like a Granny Smith's will never be a Fuji Apple. A Red Onion will never be a Yellow Onion.

Unless you're making a joke about peppers. Peppers are the same plant.

WHAT!!

Not with that attitude

In Japan they're called blue onions - neither blue nor onions.

Japanese used to have no distinction between blue and green