The actual root term of ‘red’ is ru. How? It features in terms like ‘ruddy’, ‘rusty’ and ‘rustic’. A ruddy complexion is red. Rust (iron oxide) is the reddish layer that results when iron reacts with oxygen through water as a catalyst. A rustic (rural) person was so named because he spent a lot of time outdoors and thus had a ruddy complexion. Given this, it does not take much to figure out that the term ‘red’ was originally ru-ed: i.e. indicating that something had turned ru in colour.
Words in most languages are typically extracted from something basic, natural and evocative around us. Two such basic items that are red in colour are swellings and blood. In Setswana ‘swell’ is ru-ru-ga. Indeed, a swollen body-part engorged with blood is visibly red in pale-skinned people. We must also note that consonants l and r tend to be exchangeable in many languages, as are r and d. Given this, we can understand how brood (bo-ru-ed) became ‘blood’ in English and still rhymes with ‘hood’ in many parts of the United Kingdom today. In Setswana, blood was evidently ma-ru, which became mari, and then finally madi. (The r d morph we have already noted, but must also note that ma-Illu (‘Shining Ones’) were also called ma-Irru. Also, in Sumerian – the Mesopotamian protolanguage I showed to be very close to Setswana – the superfluous, embellishing plural term i was often appended to many plural terms ending in u. So, for instance, “ma-Illu” (gods) was often “ma-Illi” – as in “eno-ma-Illi…”, the famous opening line of the Enuma-Elish epic – a practice later adopted by Latin: e.g. villu(s) singular, villi plural.)
