violet vs. purple

20:45 Apr 3, 2008 

It appears the Italian word for purple is "porpora." "Viola" translates as "violet." So it's a matter of their being two words for two colors in both languages. "Violet hair" is perfectly acceptable; it's just that "purple" will be a more concrete image.

07:33 Apr 3, 2008 

the thing is, I had "viola" in Italian.... In Google there are far more hits for "purple hair" than "violet hair".

23:15 Apr 2, 2008 

Natural in a linguistic sense although not in a biological sense, that is! :-)

23:14 Apr 2, 2008 

I'm not sure how proficient your client is in English, but "purple hair" sounds much, much more natural to me than "violet hair," which just sounds bizarre. It is perfectly all right to call hair purple if it's purple. (I say this as a native speaker.)

18:23 Apr 2, 2008 

Thank you all, because my problem was that I had translated "purple" from the Italian word "viola" referring to a hair dye, and my customer told me that I should have used "violet" . I had always used the word purple, and since I learned English in the USA I thought that that was the word most commonly used. But I guess things are more complicated and anyway there is no US/BE difference.
"Still, I do not see why hair should be violet and not purple)

11:27 Apr 2, 2008 

[The author of the above text that I cited ("janetcatmull etc") later admits that she's wrong and that it's the opposite, so please ignore it!]

08:52 Apr 2, 2008 

... but Ken's Wikipedia link does confirm my understanding after all, as well as the fact that "purple" may be used for the group of colours which includes violet on one end and magenta on the other (as pointed out by aceavila-Noni).

08:31 Apr 2, 2008 

08:31 Apr 2, 2008 

I'm not going to add this to my answer because it contradicts what I say, but it may be correct so I thought you should see it:
"Purple is a group of colors that includes violet, violet is more red, and purple is more blue."