Story of hair colors!
Swati Sinha
Hope you will like it. Really interesting!
The conventions for referring to hair color are tousled. Why is it
that we refer to someone with light-colored hair as a blonde (and,
rarely, a blond) but we call someone with red hair a redhead? Why are
blonde and brunette spelled two ways?
Blond and its feminine form blonde, both from the Latin word blundus
(“yellow”) by way of French, may have in turn come from a Frankish
word that could be related to Old English blondan, “to mix,” which
shares its origins with blend. Blond is usually employed as an
adjective, the term as a noun for a man with blond hair, by contrast,
is rare. Because blonds and blondes are more likely to be fair-skinned
as well as fair-haired, the term is also associated with light
complexion.
The presence of both masculine and feminine forms for blond/blonde and
brunet/brunette is due to their French (and ultimately Latin) roots,
as it were, as opposed to the Germanic origins of black and red, the
words for the other major hair colors, which have a neutral form.
Normally, English might have jettisoned one gendered form for
blond/blonde. However, the venerable theme in popular culture of the
blonde-haired woman as more sexually attractive and available (as well
as flighty, shallow, and dimwitted), as compared to females with hair
of another color, has caused the noun form blonde and brunette to
endure.
The numerous terms for variations in blond hair, not necessarily in
order of darkness, include sandy, strawberry, and dirty. Towhead (the
first syllable refers to its resemblance to tow, flax or hemp fibers
used for twine or yarn) describes a person with yellowish and often
unruly hair.
Brunet and brunette, from the gender-specific diminutives of the
French brun (“brown”), mean “brown haired.” (Brun and its diminutives
originally also referred to a dark complexion.) As with blond and
blonde, the male form is rarely used on its own as a noun, though the
masculine and feminine variations persist probably because of the same
double standard in association of hair color with female sexuality and
with personality characteristics as mentioned in reference to blondes
above. (Dark-haired women are stereotyped as serious, sophisticated,
and capable.) Words for shades of brown hair, from darkest to
lightest, are brunet/brunette, chestnut, walnut (the last two as
compared to colors of the respective nuts), golden, and ash.
Redhead is yet another term for hair color used as a noun; in contrast
to the colors mentioned above, it is not gender specific, though as
blonde and brunette are much more common in usage than blond and
brunet, it is more likely to refer to a woman than a man.
Variations in red hair, listed in alphabetical order rather than
according to depth of color, include auburn, copper, ginger, and
orange. (Auburn derives ultimately from the Latin word albus, meaning
“white,” but thanks to the influence of brun, the French spelling —
auborne — changed, as did the meaning, to “reddish brown.”) The
prevailing — and long-standing — cultural stereotype about redheads is
that they are hot tempered; the hair color has also been associated
with a high libido.
Alone among descriptions of people with general hair tones, a
black-haired person is never referred to by the word black alone.
Hair-color categories are arbitrary — strawberry blond is sometimes
considered a type of red hair, and auburn might be classified as a
type of brown hair — though a system called the Fischer-Saller scale,
devised for anthropological and medical classification, assigns
alphabetical letters and roman numerals to various grades of hair
color.
--
when things don't seem to be going your way, always know that God has
a plan for you. If you place your trust in Him, He will give you great
gifts. We don't always know what God's plans are for us. We just know
that His ways are not our ways, but His ways are always best.
Renuka Warriar
Thanks for this nice info.
Renuka.