Purple is the rarest color on national flags.

If you want your flag to fit in, go with red, white, and blue, the three most popular colors found on the world’s flags. If you want to go a more distinctive route, add a dash of purple, because only one national flag in the world sports this hue. That flag belongs to the Caribbean island nation of Dominica, and features the country’s national bird, the purple-plumed sisserou parrot (Amazona imperialis). This endangered bird is one of the oldest Amazon parrot species in the world, and can be found only in the remote mountain forests of Dominica. 

The word “purple” is Greek for “midnight.”

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The word “purple” originates from the Greek “porphura,” a reference to the purpura mollusk. These sea snails were the key ingredient in the Tyrian purple dye created by ancient Phoenicians. Because the dye was so costly, purple became closely associated with royalty.

Eagle-eyed flag experts might note that the flags of both Nicaragua and El Salvador feature volcano-traversing rainbows, which (theoretically) contain the full spectrum of visible color. However, Dominica still wins out on a technicality. These two countries officially label the last shade of the rainbow on their flags as “violet” and “blue,” respectively, and the color purple is a nonspectral color, meaning it isn’t represented by a specific wavelength of light (and therefore not part of a rainbow). Instead, the color purple is a construction of our brain and the limitations of the cones in our eyes. So unless some country opts for a purple-centric redesign, the chromatic glory of the sisserou parrot will remain a flag favorite. 

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