Why do so many Danes insist on calling yellow gold red gold (rødguld)? It doesn’t make any sense since gold is yellow. Especially not because you CAN actually get red gold - an alloy with a high amount of copper, which we have had to call “rose gold” because “red gold” is occupied by the yellow gold! However, there is a historical reason for the strangeness at hand:

In ancient times (viking age) all warm colours ranging from yellow over orange to red were called “red”. I know this for a fact because I ended up calling “Dansk Sprognævn” – the Danish Language Board – in order to get a straight answer the this puzzle. Here a nice lady here told me, that the difference in how various linguistic groups (and at various times)  have seen and named colour is a well known fact. For instance the Japanese didn’t have a word for the colour “green” up until recent times. It was all called “blue”!

Here is a very interesting video about how the use of words for colours was widely different acros the world - and why:

As for the gold however, there is the small detail (which she couldn’t know), that in old times furnaces weren’t able to reach the high temperatures which the professional furnaces can at our time, and therefore the pure gold seldom actually WAS entirely pure. Often other materials, for instance copper, was naturally mixed into it which COULD explain why the Vikings and Danes ever since have insisted in naming yellow gold “the red gold”.

In my daily life in the jewellery shop however, it puts a challenge on me, because every time a customer asks for jewellery in “red gold” I have to ask “do you want yellow gold or rose gold?”