r/MapPorn • u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk • Aug 23 '26
How to say ‘Red’ in European languages! (V1)
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u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk Aug 23 '26
This map was a hellllllll of a lot of work and research to do. But I know I made mistakes, which is why im posting it here! To see if anyone spots any mistake I couldn’t spot myself. Nevertheless, I’m very proud of this map! It was very fun to research and do, and especially fulfilling once I finished.
If anyone has any info on what I missed, let me know! Hope you guys like it!
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u/arvid1328_ Aug 23 '26
Thank you for adding Berber languages, especially Kabyle my mother tongue, Berber languages are underrepresented in language maps like this. And to assure you, the north African area you included is mistake-free.
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u/Matija_sjekira Aug 23 '26
Not really a mistake, but since you put both the latinic and Cyrillic script for Montenegro, you could have put that also for Bosnia. Anyways great map though.
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u/NashvilleFlagMan Aug 24 '26
Does RS use Cyrillic that much? I thought even Serbia is using it less and less.
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u/Matija_sjekira Aug 24 '26
It's that official script in both Serbia and RS, so latinic comes after Cyrillic. Cyrillic is also the first one learnt in school. In terms of which is used more by people, latinic is used more and more because of the internet, but it is still close I would say in popularity. I personally use Cyrillic when typing in Serbian.
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u/Emotional-Ebb8321 Aug 23 '26 edited Aug 23 '26
Where is the hi-res version with legible text? (Yes, I kn ow there are zoomed in images, but it's hard to compare the map key to the map that way).
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u/Dysterqvist Aug 23 '26
Thanks for including Meänkieli! A lot of these maps miss the small Finnic language in northern Sweden, or at best group it with standard Finnish.
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u/loafers_glory Aug 23 '26
Irish uses both dearg (for unnatural red like a firetruck) and rua (for natural red like hair or a fox).
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u/ThorirPP Aug 23 '26
I'm curious why the explanation for the red coloured areas derived from proto Indo-European "*h¹rewdh-" doesn't also include the germanic languages, only showing romance, slavic, celtic and baltic
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u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk Aug 23 '26
Oh shit that may be my biggest mistake yet, completely forgot about it, thanks
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u/cabbageisbad Aug 23 '26
Missing: Northern/Northwestern Croatia (Kajkavian), word for red is: črleni(m.), črlena(f.), črleno(n.)
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u/Oachlkaas Aug 23 '26
Nice map!
Missing "Roat" and "Ruat" in Austria though. Specifically western Austria, around Tyrol.
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u/WarcriBeast Aug 23 '26
There are slavic Macedonian speakers in northern Greece. The linguistic border does not correspond with the political one.
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u/Loko8765 Aug 24 '26
Not sure how you’d represent it, but “vermeil” and “incarnat” are words for red in French as well, even if incarnat is very rare and used for a specific shade of red (cf. original and now secondary meaning of “carnation” in English). However I suppose that if you go down to that level of detail the map would be unintelligible.
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u/mizinamo Aug 24 '26
You have the feminine -ná ending for Czech and Slovak rather than the masculine -ný (which would be the dictionary form).
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u/NashvilleFlagMan Aug 24 '26
I mean the name of the colors as a noun is actually normally given in the feminine in Slovak, because it’s červená (farba).
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u/thelastskier Aug 24 '26
I like it, I had no idea we were the only Slavic language to use the more romance/germanic root of the word for red.
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u/french_pig_poop Aug 24 '26
Nice map but in France, most people just say « Rouge » except maybe Bretagne and the south.
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u/quedeusmeperdoe Aug 23 '26
Op,you should have posted this map like a month ago. A Lady was mad at me because She kept saying that red in portuguese is rojo, and She could not find the way to get the correct metro line to go to the airport. I told her that i was born here, so i assume portuguese always Said vermelho and never rojo, but She just kept ranting.
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u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk Aug 23 '26
In Portuguese and Galician it shifted to mean purple, roxo
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u/levemeodemo Aug 23 '26 edited Aug 23 '26
In Galician it shifted like in Portuguese (Source: I use it that way) but the younger generations are using it like in Spanish "thanks" to diglossia.
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u/Squallofeden Aug 23 '26
Interesting to see the Finnic languages. Of course punainen is red, but also ruskea means brown in modern Finnish and is similar to red so I see the connection. Verrev in Estonia is similar to veri, which means blood (another red substance).
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u/vompat Aug 24 '26 edited Aug 25 '26
Yeah I'm wondering if there are mistakes on the map for some of those Finnic languages, or if ruskea (and similar words) actually means red instead of brown in some of them.
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u/Sharlinator Aug 25 '26
Brown is a fairly "late" color in the common evolutionary sequence of color words, whereas red is usually the first after dark/light. So in most languages shades of brown will have been called red before gaining a dedicated word.
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u/Fast-Coast-3456 Aug 23 '26
No one in spain says "colorado" to refer to the color red. It's an adjective used to refer to people when blush, because their face gain "color", kind of red. But in the present time no one uses that either, only elder people.
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u/ch4rl1 Aug 23 '26
I do, depends on the region so don't talk on behalf of everybody in Spain.
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u/RijnBrugge Aug 23 '26
This subthread was funny to me: my experience with Spaniards is exactly that. People will confidently say something about Spanish or Spain and insist it cannot be otherwise anywhere else, while I personally have heard Spaniards claim whatever is diametrically opposed to said claim at some other time. Also applies to politics, history, whatever
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u/ropahektic Aug 24 '26
They're being funny or just unable to understand reality as it is without resorting to personal experiences as a source of truth.
Only an extremely small percentage of people use "colorado". It is not used in current literature, movies, TV or media of any type, it is not ever used in the vast majority of Spain and popular culture is filled with examples, including the recent World cup title by La Roja.
Heck, I'm a 38 Spaniard and I have never heard it used once, if I had to guess, some random town in Andalucia or maybe Canarias where redditors heard their grandmother say it once and now come to reddit for a "gotcha" moment.
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u/Lyceus_ Aug 23 '26
Colorido refers to colour. Colorado is red but it isn't used much, only in expressions like "ponerse colorado" = "turning red" (feeling shame.]
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u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk Aug 23 '26
I was under that impression too, at first, but looking deeper into it many sources say it does refer to “red”, which wouldn’t be surprising in some dialectal varieties. Like extremaduran Castilian (not the current extremaduran language) which has heavy influence from Leonese, which does use coloráu for the colour itself. It’s safe to assume that, while not universal in Castilian speaking regions, the usage of Colorado for red exists in some places
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u/_kaedama_ Aug 23 '26 edited Aug 23 '26
My grandmother from castilla always sid colorado instead of rojo. My understanding is that rojo was used to call leftwingers and so after the war the franco regime did not like the word rojo being used and so people were expected to say colorado instead
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u/UltHamBro Aug 23 '26
For a time, encarnado was used instead. There are old editions of "Caperucita encarnada".
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u/Impressive-Oil-3067 Aug 23 '26
Like I said above, your post is about languages, and colorado means red in some South American countries, so it's still correct.
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u/Smalde Aug 23 '26
Not a major issue, but on this topic: Colorado, while it certainly might be used in some regions, is very very uncommon whereas "roig" in Catalan is the main word in several regions. I just mean to say that it makes maybe more sense to have colorado in parentheses than roig.
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u/UltHamBro Aug 24 '26
I'd say it's archaic and/or extremely minoritary. The only kind of red the word colorado evokes in me is someone blushing, but outside of that, I don't think I've ever heard anyone use the word in any other context. Someone referring to "un coche colorado" would feel as out of place as "a blushed car" instead of "a red car" in English.
Not that it's incorrect to include it, but the yellow and red lines seem to imply that both words are used at roughly 50%, while in reality, it would be closer to 99.9% vs 0.01%.
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u/Mercy--Main Aug 23 '26
its not an impression, its native speakers correcting you bro
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u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk Aug 23 '26
Yo también tengo conocimiento en la área no saqué esto del culo tío
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u/UltHamBro Aug 24 '26 edited Aug 24 '26
No one says "sacar del culo". You were clearly going for "getting it out of your ass", but it doesn't work that way. "Sacar de la manga" would be much more idiomatic. Also, it's "el área", even if the word is feminine.
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u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk Aug 24 '26
Ah si eso del artículo la con palabras con a y tal. Pero sacar del culo ya he escuchado antes no me jodas
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u/UltHamBro Aug 24 '26
Pues suena a alguien que no domina de verdad el castellano y traduce literalmente del inglés. Tampoco te recomiendo escribir "no me jodas" en un comentario casual en Reddit.
It reads like you're trying too hard, so much that it comes out off-putting.
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u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk Aug 24 '26
Suena a alguien q creció en una región de frontera hablando una lengua minoritaria y siendo trilingüe. Soy Mirandesa, y para “sobrevivir” los mirandeses siempre supieron hablar Portugués y Castellano aparte del propio mirandés. Ya hablé con muchos castellano-hablantes durante mi vida, y perdona si no es un castellano “estándar”, pero fue lo que crecí hablando todos los veranos cuando venían los castellanos del otro lado de la frontera, fue lo que me enseñó la experiencia y mi familia, es un tipo de “dialecto no nativo” que ya existe hace siglos, pero un grupo de personas lo habla y mantiene su forma así. No es traducir literalmente del inglés, porque literalmente se dice “sacar de l culu” en mirandés. Nun datendu la tue necidade de probar que “nun sei falar castellanu”, nien siempre se sabe to la stória.
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u/UltHamBro Aug 24 '26
No pasa nada porque no hables un castellano estándar ni no nativo, es encomiable que crecieras trilingüe y me alegro de ello. Lo que te he dicho es simplemente un consejo. La expresión, en un contexto de un hilo de Reddit que está mayoritariamente en inglés y escrita por alguien que estaba escribiendo sus comentarios anteriores en inglés, suena a que estás traduciendo literalmente del inglés. Si en mirandés sí se usa, ningún problema.
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u/chiqu3n Aug 23 '26
"Colorado" and "rojo" are literally synonyms per RAE, maybe in your experience it is not used much but Iive in the south and many people (mostly elderly and amongst the country side) still use it just as much as "rojo".
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u/Impressive-Oil-3067 Aug 23 '26
In Argentina, Uruguay and some other countries "colorado" is a synonym for "rojo", and the map is about European languages, not countries, so it fits.
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u/Nessahria Aug 27 '26
No le hagas ni caso a este tipo. En España también se usa "colorado", que es sinónimo de "rojo". Supongo que este no ha salido de la plaza de su pueblo y se cree que puede hablar por todos.
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u/PuskerBat Aug 23 '26
Thanks a lot for all the hard work on this really interesting map!
As for Basque/Euskara, if I may add a little detail as this is one of those languages that often gets labelled “unknown” in etymological maps (and it's very frustrating as an Euskaldun myself), but there are actually some interesting proposals.
Gor(r)- has been proposed as a root associated with “red,” “dry,” and “naked/bare” (cf. Aquitanian Baigorri). There’s also a possible comparison with Sardinian toponymy, e.g. Funtana Gorru (Eduardo Blasco Ferrer), and perhaps even Ainu hure “red,” although that comparison is much more speculative.
There’s a really useful free etymological dictionary of Basque here (made by CNRS Basque linguist Dr. Morvan), which might be handy for anyone making maps like this and wondering where the hell Basque roots come from:
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u/selja26 Aug 23 '26
It's interesting to see vermiculus (worm) as one of the origins because in slavic languages red is mostly "chervony" which sounds very close to "cherv" (worm). Also fun how "rudy" (red) split in slavic languages because in some of them it still means red and in some it's strictly the colour of hair (and maybe rust but more like a metaphor) and nothing else.
Btw "chervonny" in russian doesn't mean red and is rarely used, mostly meaning high quality (yellow) gold. Красный (krasnyj, red) in russian evolved from the word "beauty".
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u/TheRaido Aug 23 '26
I was first glancing this map and saw ‘chervony’ and ‘kırmızı’ and thought they looked somehow familiar. I then looked into them and they both have a wormy root, like vermiculus.
As a Dutch and Low Saxon speaking person I only know Rood/Räod, but in the archaic Bible translation I grew up with has two. Karmozijn (crimson), scharlaken (scarlet) and vermiljoen(vermillion).
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u/selja26 Aug 23 '26
There's (somewhat archaic) karmazin colour in Ukrainian and russian for a deep shade of red, and rich fabrics of that colour. I wonder if all these colours were made by using worms as a dye. Some of those worms were Polish cochineal (Porphyrophora polonica, Margarodes polonicus), also known as Polish carmine scales.
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u/makerofshoes Aug 23 '26
Yeah it’s a bit funky because Turkish borrowed the Indo-European word 🤷♂️
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u/NashvilleFlagMan Aug 24 '26
Holy shit I never connected červ and červený. This is like when I heard that pondelok (Monday) comes from po nedeli (after Sunday)
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u/Progons Aug 23 '26
Wouldn't be Albanian "kuq" more likely related to Greek "Kokinos"* rather than the Latin ?
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u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk Aug 23 '26
Yes, that’s exactly what the map says and shows
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u/Progons Aug 23 '26
Alright interesting. So it isn't Indo European? Could it be an older stratum?
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u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk Aug 23 '26
We’re not sure of the origin, that I know of. The earliest recorded form I could see was Ancient Greek, and no reconstructed term before it
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u/DeliberateHesitaion Aug 23 '26
In Russian червонный is obsolete. Most people probably know it from literature or history classes.
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u/CleaverIam3 Aug 23 '26
By no means it is obsolete. A less common poetic word for sure but everyone knows what it means and it is used in certain contexts.
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u/makerofshoes Aug 23 '26
That sounds like the status of “crimson” in English, which is incidentally related to the Slavic and Turkish words for red
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u/Gekelbek Aug 23 '26
Nowdays absolutely nobody uses "Червонный" in Russia, it is archaic. Only "Красный".
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u/helloworder Aug 23 '26
well, it's for sure not the first choice for the word "red", but it is not correct to say that "nobody uses it". It is still part of the modern language, it is used in literature and poetry.
It is also a non-archaic word when used as an adjective for "pure" gold: "червонное золото".
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u/V_es Aug 23 '26
Pure gold is «чистое золото» and nobody says «червонное золото» at all.
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u/helloworder Aug 23 '26
my anecdotal experience differs from yours, then
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u/ultrakawaii Sep 02 '26
I don't know what the other person is talking about. The term "червонное золото" is used in art.
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u/ultrakawaii Sep 02 '26
«червонное золото» is "red gold" and it's absolutely used in jewelry and art. If you personally never heard of it, it doesn't mean that "nobody says it at all"
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u/Gekelbek Aug 23 '26
In the case with the gold I think has the meaning "красивый" not "красный".
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u/Narcisistagohome Aug 23 '26
In spanish, though it's a bit outdated and mostly used in poetic lenguaje or to mean cinaber, you can also say "bermellón".
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Aug 23 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk Aug 23 '26
Cypriot Arabic, not all of Cyprus speaks it, you can see by the colour that it’s still a Greek Turkish split, there are tiny green dots in some places of the island
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u/IoIoIoYoIoIoI Aug 23 '26
Serbia absolutely has the "ro-/ru-/re-" root besides the more usual "crven"/"црвен", present in expressions like "rujno vino" (red wine) and "rumeni obrazi" (red cheeks).
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u/saimhann Aug 24 '26
This is sort of implying that sami speakers are outnumbering norwegian speakers in the northern parts of the country. This is not correct, most people living in these areas are norwegian and not sami. In fact most sami people live in Oslo.
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u/Davyth Aug 23 '26
Welsh also has the word 'rhudd' meaning ruddy
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u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk Aug 23 '26
I didn’t include any words for shades of red besides the core word for red itself, with only 2 exceptions
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u/SoSmartKappa Aug 23 '26
That is fair, but for example in Czech language it is also common to just say "rudá" for red, it might mean deep blood shade, but from the most part in common language it just mean red.
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u/Longjumping-Gift-371 Aug 23 '26
Great map, but I will say that “Eskimo” is a controversial term and can be seen as offensive by some of the people that it applies to. If you did want to change it, the other accepted name for that branch of the Eskaleut languages is Inuit-Yupik.
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u/OreunGZ Aug 23 '26
Colorado is rarely used in Spain. But it is a synonym. You can also say bermellón or bermejón, and encarnado, though both are also rarely used. The only one that's commonly used is Rojo.
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u/ArchitectArtVandalay Aug 23 '26
I'm Uruguayan and we generally use "rojo" and almost never heard "colorado" in Uruguay.
Yet I found a great difference when living in neighbouring Argentina. Middle / upper class Argentinians considered mandatory using "colorado", because "rojo" was a word used by lower class / culture parts of society. When they read aloud the colour in a newspaper, they would noticeably change the umcomfortable one.
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u/QtheM Aug 23 '26
Why does it say 'Read' in the North sea?
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u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk Aug 23 '26
Theres a line connecting it to land, it’s West Frisian
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u/superkoning Aug 23 '26
Google says it's Westerlauwers Fries / plain Fries (Frisian). And Google Translate confirms
West Frisian is in North-Holland, not in Friesland
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u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk Aug 23 '26
…what??
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u/superkoning Aug 23 '26
what what?
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u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk Aug 23 '26
What did you even say??? Who brought North Holland to the conversation? Since when is West Frisian in North Holland?????? Huh?????
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u/superkoning Aug 23 '26
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u/QtheM Aug 23 '26
Your link says that west frisian has disappeared from that region of north holland
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u/superkoning Aug 23 '26
Where?
I only "The West Frisian language has disappeared from the region[1] and the later West Frisian dialects are now slowly disappearing."
"West-Friesland" disappearing would not be great news. Flooding? "The West-Friesland region in North Holland has approximately 221,123 residents (based on recent regional registration data). "
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u/QtheM Aug 23 '26 edited Aug 23 '26
One moment. it seems we are talking cross-purposes. There is a west friesian Dutch dialect that is separate from the west friesian language. The former was prevalent in north Holland but has pretty much died out. The latter is spoken in frieseland
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u/ThePrevailingReality Aug 24 '26
Kirmizi is Turkish is synonymous to the Arabic Qurmuzi قرمزي which is a certain degree of red (blood red).
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u/Whack_Moles Aug 27 '26
In most parts of the middle and north of Norway we (the norweigan population, not the indigenous population) say "Rø".
Same with parts of the western part of Norway - A common way to say it is "Rau"
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u/antisa1003 Aug 23 '26
Kajkavian and chakavian word for red colour is črlena. So you can probably add that to Croatia.
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u/Oberndorferin Aug 23 '26
Raud in Swabian/sw germany
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u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk Aug 23 '26
Thanks!
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u/Oberndorferin Aug 23 '26
Often used when it's about a boiled sausage at a stand, we call red sausage "Raude Wuschd" (Rote Wurst).
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u/Generdan Aug 23 '26
In Russian Червоный (chervónyi) is very old version, no one use it. We use only Красный (krásnyi).
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u/-GERmanio- Aug 23 '26
It's the language in Spain (bordering Portugal) where they say "roxu" extremeño? That's an obscure one, interesting!
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u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk Aug 23 '26
The one that says just Roxu is Xalimego, the one next to it that has Roxu and Coloráu is extremaduran, yes
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Aug 23 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk Aug 23 '26
While none of them are uniform, Anglic is generally split in two, English in the south, Scots in the north, and it’s a continuum from A to B; German on the other hand, is split in 3, and within that 3 way separation, it’s divided even further, French (d’Oïl) is generally split in 5ish languages, and the rest of France speaks different branches of Romance. Italy is also split between 3 whole linguistic branches. Country≠Language, a country can have multiple regional languages, which is the case for a good majority of European nations
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u/Safeword-is-banana Aug 23 '26
What’s going on in Finland?
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u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk Aug 23 '26
What’s wrong?
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u/Safeword-is-banana Aug 23 '26
Somehow, and I don’t know why, it makes me think of vagina. Just maybe because of the popular slang word for it being punani.
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u/thechickenskull Aug 23 '26
Finnish is part of a different language family (see also Hungarian and Estonian).
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u/NikolitRistissa Aug 24 '26
Other than the Swedish and Sámi languages being vastly overestimated, nothing in particular. Our language is just very different from the Germanic ones.
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u/forlackofinspiration Aug 24 '26
For Greek there is also ερυθρός.
Also when referring to color I would probably expect to use the neutral instead of the masculine form.
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u/bobfromholland Aug 24 '26
Props for including both Saxon-Dutch/East-Frisian and West-Frisian in the Netherlands
What’s the roôd in the south? Flemish?
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u/DunAnOir Aug 24 '26
Irish is dearg or ruadh. Natural things (leaves, hair) are ruadh (e.g. fiadh rua, madra rua, gruaig rua - red deer, fox, red hair), light or artificial things are dearg. We have the same division for green (uaine, glas).
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u/Crazy-Magician-7011 Aug 24 '26
Could you list out the norwegian variations? They're cut off in the close up.
I potentially have more for you.
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u/brutelity Aug 24 '26
I'd redo the Finnish southern coast as most of what is red here is actually majority Finnish speaking.
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u/reevelainen Aug 24 '26
Probably 1/4 of the most southern part would call it punainen. The rest of us just say punanen.
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u/xX100dudeXx Aug 23 '26
What is "raud" from? I'm learning norwegian & haven't seen it.
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u/Samimic Aug 23 '26
Wydm "colorado" ??? In spanish colorado means other thing
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u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk Aug 23 '26
I was under that impression too, at first, but looking deeper into it many sources say it does refer to “red”, which wouldn’t be surprising in some dialectal varieties. Like extremaduran Castilian (not the current extremaduran language) which has heavy influence from Leonese, which does use coloráu for the colour itself. It’s safe to assume that, while not universal in Castilian speaking regions, the usage of Colorado for red exists in some places
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u/Samimic Aug 23 '26
Hmm, well that makes more sense. Another thing, "colorado" usually means something with many colors, bright or strong colors, and sometimes, but almost never, "colorado" is used to say that something is a fiery red or someone blushed
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u/mysterious_Ploopy Aug 23 '26
it annoys me when these language maps make Ireland also have the English word and the Irish word has to be off to the side.
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u/mizinamo Aug 24 '26
Doesn't that reflect where Irish is spoken by the general population in daily life?
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u/mysterious_Ploopy Aug 24 '26
in my opinion it's easier to read and just makes it look better to have the whole island of Ireland be Irish.
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u/Serpenta4 Aug 23 '26
As a hungarian I was at first like “Why the hell is the origin of the word piros uncertain? It comes from the words pír, pirít ect.” but then I tried to look up the origin of those words and was like huh, it really is uncertain