The same holds true for the linguistics of colour, which share similarities in many regions of Europe. In the names of geographical features such as landscapes, mountains and, most markedly, in the names of rivers, it points to unmistakeable origins in Stone Age communalities like Rhône, Rhine and Ruhr. The names for colours in many European languages share a common linguistic origin: rosso in Italian, rojo in Spanish, rouge in French, red in English. Rebus or rube, rubin or rost in Latin, rudh in Sanskrit, ryth in ancient Nordic, rubigo in Latin, rouille in French, rust in English. They all share the same word stem.
To this day, red occupies a fixed place in everyday colloquialisms. An angry person sees red while an embarrassed person goes red in the face. A company whose balance sheet figures are in the red is losing money, but a red-letter day is one to be celebrated.
After black and white/grey, red is the third most commonly used colour expression, followed by pink, blue, violet, green, yellow, orange, brown, ochre, beige, turquoise, cyan, magenta, gold, silver and bronze. The colours listed above are a fixed part of our coloristic vocabulary.