Purple Flags? Part Three: Number Crunching

I've devoted several posts to the mystery of why there is no purple on any of the world's national flags. And posted pictures of some of the rare flags that contain purple (like the flag of Tokyo & a bunch from regions in Spain.) Google-searching about purple flags is the most common way that people find this site randomly on the internet, so I will continue to give the public more of what it wants. If I could somehow combine Miss Utah & Michael Jackson's testicles on a purple flag I could create an über-blog post which would be irresistible to even unrelated googling. People googling their ex-girlfriends would find themselves helplessly drawn to this weblog!

Someone at a flag retail store named CRW Flags in Glen Burnie, Maryland, named Ivan Sarajcic, has crunched all the numbers for color frequency on national flags. (Perhaps there's a ton of down time if you work at a flag retail store?) Analyzing 192 flags, these are the statistics for how many flags have which color, & what percent of the total contain that color:

Red - 148 - 77.08%

White - 140 - 72.92%

Blue - 102 - 53.13%

Yellow/Gold - 89 - 46.30%

Green - 87 - 45.31%

Black - 59 - 30.73%

Orange - 9 - 4.69%

Brown - 9 - 4.69%

Gray - 6 - 3.13%

Purple - 2 - 1.04%

Only two national flags contain any purple! Spain & Nicaragua! We've also learned that orange, brown & gray are neglected. And there's no pink - which is interesting, because pink has only recently been associated with girlyness, princesses, & frat boy business clothes, so there was plenty of time for it to become a national color before it acquired such unfortunate stereotypes. Mr Sarajcic also broke down the colors by how much is on the total area of the flags:

Red - 30.30%

Blue - 21.15%

White - 19.12%

Green - 15.33%

Yellow/Gold - 8.6%

Black - 5.13%

Orange - 1.24%

Brown - 0.11%

Gray - 0.03%

Purple - 0.001%

Purple's portion is infinitesimal because the two national flags it appears on only have a tiny bit. Spain (0.10%) - that same lion from the Kingdom of León we discussed before!

& Nicaragua (0.04%) - purple snuck in thru the rainbow - 

Compared to colors like green, which gets 100% of Libya's flag - (Green was Muhammad's favorite color, which is why it's all over the flags of Islamic countries).

All of Mr Sarajcic's fascinating report can be read at http://www.crwflags.com/FOTW/FLAGS/xf-csts.html.

When I published Purple Flags? The Sequel, one person responded with some beautiful Incan Flags.

The Incan Rainbow Flag 

The Flag of Qullasuya, southeastern region of the Incan Empire.

Any more, world?

Purple Flags? The Sequel

It seems like only thirteen months ago that I wrote a post about Purple Flags. I did declare that it was a mystery why the color purple - a strong color, the color of royalty, a good Christian color - is represented on NOT ONE OF THE WORLD's national flags. I presented pictures of several of the curious flags, some regional ones, some defunct ones, which contained some purple, still a surprisingly tiny number - & I asked for help finding more. I still declare this a bizarre mystery, unsolved, why one of the major colors is almost unused in national iconography. Is it because nationalism & modern country flags grew up while royalty was losing its footing? Is it because purple is a more expensive dye, inherently un-populist - altho I suspect that explanation would have lost its logic by the 19th Century when flags were on the rise. In America, where, as pick-up truck bumpers inform us, these colors don't run, otherwise we'd have plenty of purple or light-purple flags.

Because the original Purple Flags essay became one of the most clicked-on posts at itwaslost.org, & it is not like us to deprive the loyal readers what they want, HERE ARE MORE PURPLE FLAGS - some of which were mentioned but not shown in the last post or suggested by readers' comments.

Mr Brains Aha!, a native of Louisville, Kentucky, sent us the city's current flag:
Is the color related to the Fleur de Lise? Looks a bit bluish.

Here's Tokyo's Flag:
In the comments for the last post, Pele wrote "It's like an anime arse a-winkin' at me. Hard to think of any offensive cause with a purple flag, so I'm FER it!" Here here.

Do you remember the Iberian peninsula's Kingdom of León, which existed independently from 910 to 1301? (I've never seen a purple lion in Europe.) This is the "classic example" of porpora, or Purpure, the original rare tincture. You would think these high middle ages, with the height of heraldry, would be the origin of all the purple flags to follow, such as this Castile flag:

In that original post, I linked to The “purple” flag of Chuvashia at a "flags of the world" website. Here's that flag:
I notice now on that website, there's quite some debate there about what exactly purple is. António Martins writes:

[...]Then I decided to make an experiment. I grabed a handful of objects clearly red and other of purple ones, and then asked Russians and Chuvashs «What is this color?»…

The red ones, ranging from a Marlboro cigarrette pack to a Swiss Army knife, were imediately classified as "krasnyĭ". After some insistence, the swiss army knife could be called "temno-krasnyĭ". And then I’d ask: «Could it be "purpurnyĭ"?» and most would hesitate and concede a yes.

The purple ones, after some hesitation, were said to be "fioletovyĭ" or "malinovyĭ". Most people would confess that the differences between those words are not very definite, only maybe in the head of graphical artists. And then I’d ask: «But could any of these [the purple ones] be "purpurnyĭ"?» And every interviewed person, even already color confused, would imediately say: «No, not at all! Definitely not "purpurnyĭ"!».

The final question was «Apart from yellow, what’s the colour of your flag?». Not a single person replyed spontaneasly with "purpurnyĭ"! Everybody would say "krasnyĭ", rarely "temno-krasnyĭ" (or theyr chuvash equivalents), and when I asked «Is it "purpurnyĭ"?» they would hesitatingly reply «Yes, but… that’s not an often word…», and even one chuvash speaker was surprised to learn that the very word "purpur" exists in chuvash…

Careful direct observation of a large number of flags hoisted in public places and goverment buildings metal plates in Ĉeboksary | Чебоксары / Ŝupaŝkar | Шупашкар, Novoĉeboksarsk | Новочебоксарск, Alatyr | Алатыр and Kanaŝ | Канаш shown that the color used matches almost precisely with the shade of (dark) red in the handle of a so called Swiss Army knife (original Victorinox brand).

Not just in Chuvashia! You can see just from the flags pictured here, what purplish varieties, & how a couple stretch the definition. I remember from my Shakespeare days, that the bard often describes the color of blood as "purple".

The red rose and the white are on his face,
The fatal colours of our striving houses:
The one his purple blood right well resembles;
The other his pale cheeks, methinks, presenteth.
-Henry VI Part III, [II.v.97-100]

Unless I'm misreading that, King Henry seems to be comparing the purple color of blood with the red rose of Lancaster. At the end of Henry the Sixth Part III (spoiler alert!), Richard of Goucester describes the king's bleeding to death ("the aspiring blood of Lancaster / Sink in the ground") as purple tears [V.vi.61-64]. There in my Norton edition there's a side note defining purple as "blood-red". Thank you Stephen Greenblatt for your helpful annotations! I'm not sure any of this has furthered our understanding of the purple flag mystery, except to confuse the definitions a bit. There's plenty on the wikipedias about the history of purple.

The tiny purple flags at the top of the post are from the Gulf Shores of Alabama website: the purple flag, from their five flag warning system for jelly fish & rip tides, means "dangerous marine life present". That could explain the dearth of purple flags, it was frustrating that every time you tried to show patriotism, everyone would run for dry land.

Purple Flag wavers of the world, help us find more!

PURPLE FLAGS? PART THREE: NUMBER CRUNCHING

Purple Flags?

Last night, we were telling some late night house-callers about an all purple meal we had prepared Friday Night. It was baked purple potatoes (sliced thin in oil with lemon-thyme & purple garlic-onions, delicious), & buckwheat pasta in a white-wine/butter sauce with purple cauliflower, purple carrots, purple garlic-onions, portabella mushrooms, purple olives & capers. The result was a symphony of flavors, but only one color! This was a test-run & idea gathering mission for a whole purple meal, with aubergines & lavender things & beets tied up in strings. Our guests last night suggested either the cuisines of states that are half-red-state & half-blue-states. (Missouri cuisine? Florida cuisine?) Or cuisines from countries with purple flags.

Which leads us to the mystery. If you scan thru the flags of the world, none of them have purple in them! Why not? Internet searches to find purple flags found some alternate flags - like the Purple Flag of Chuvasia - & some sports flags - like the Sacramento Kings. "Purple Flag" is also slang for a person of gay persuasions, apparently. Still, why wouldn't any country anywhere have purple in it's flag? It's the royal color, the color of Christ on Easter, & a pretty strong hue all around. Luckily, there's a Wikipedia page with lists of flags by color - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flags_by_color - very useful for just such situations. I'll post some of the purple flags here:


This is from the Balearic Islands, an autonomous region of Spain off of the Iberian Peninsula. It may win for general classy color combination, & their groovy castle.


This one is also from Spain, from the port city of Málalga.


And this one was from the Spanish Second Republic. I suppose that could explain the color scheme of the Balearic Islands.

Other flags with purple in them were: 1) Montreal Flag has a Scottish thistle as one of its four flowers; 2) Gay Pride flag has a purple stripe; 3) Dominican Flag has a purple parrot in the center. Did you know the Gay Pride Flag employs the golden ratio?

I suppose, as far as cuisine, we could lean towards 1930's Tapas.

Any additional information on Purple Flags would be EXTREMELY HELPFUL. Or, if anyone knows why there is a dearth of them. It does seem a terrible loss. Or suggestions about purple foods or purple cuisine.

PURPLE FLAGS: THE SEQUEL

If you enjoyed this essay on purple flags, then, for no particular reason, I have reason to believe you will also enjoy the album "Stuck Home Syndrome" by Friends Around the Campfire. It's well worth the $5.99!

Please "like" our band The Manna Tease on facebooks:


___________________________________
More shameless advertisements:
My illuminated nonsense rhyming poetry book - only $2.15 on scribd.com:

S. Sandrigon - Prophecy and Doggerel 2009