“Hazel” simply means “changing”, not brown. I have hazel eyes, and they’re nowhere near brown. Point of fact, though: the word “brown” comes from the only surviving prehistoric word for “bear”. Consider the absolutely reverent terror our ancestors (heh, forebears) had for the unstoppable, unkillable, unfathomable ruin that was embodied in that single creature that they named an entire color after it. ☠️
Also, IIRC: all brown eyes are blue underneath, having a thin melanin sheath that alters the external color.
Cool cool. I never called hazel brown. I have hazel eyes, but I like brown.
Yeah, all eyes are blue under the pigmentation layer. The one that I wish we knew is if human phenotype differences could have been the result of breeding with other hominins. I wish humanity were mature enough to delve into such things without some inbred prejudice nonsense. It would be funny to find white skin and blue eyes are not originally homo sapien traits.
It is funny to me that I like eyes that are weakly brown enough to show a vibrant amber, while I have hazel which is just barely on the flip side of just enough brown to only show around the center of you look closely, buy shifts blue into a greyish green with more of a bluish fringe.
I hear ya there, and I want to clarify: hazel is not variegated/multicolored, it is used to describe eyes with changing colors. Mine can go through entire hue ranges, depending on an array of factors like emotion, time of day, attire, surroundings, etc. In short, having specks of gold or amber doesn’t make an eye color “hazel” anymore than having freckles makes a person a witch. Oh wait, no. That last one is true, sorry.
…This is actually somewhat of a myth. Human eyes don’t typically change color more than once in a lifespan (usually during infancy). The same goes for people with > hazel eyes.
One part of this pervasive belief is based on the fact that people define “hazel” in a number of ways. It represents a range of colors ranging from brownish to greenish and even gray sometimes. > > Because of this, two people who have “hazel” eyes can actually have very dissimilar iris colors.
Another aspect of this particular eye color that probably causes confusion is the fact that eyes within the color range generally defined as “hazel” tend to have a higher degree of reflectivity than > > normal. This means that hazel-colored eyes are more likely to reflect the colors around them, such as the sky, a close surface, or what a person is wearing.
Basically, it’s like an optical illusion, if you’ll forgive the pun. Because of the color range and propensity for hazel colored yes to reflect different colored light surfaces, people often think they’re > > > changing color entirely.
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“Hazel” simply means “changing”, not brown. I have hazel eyes, and they’re nowhere near brown. Point of fact, though: the word “brown” comes from the only surviving prehistoric word for “bear”. Consider the absolutely reverent terror our ancestors (heh, forebears) had for the unstoppable, unkillable, unfathomable ruin that was embodied in that single creature that they named an entire color after it. ☠️
Also, IIRC: all brown eyes are blue underneath, having a thin melanin sheath that alters the external color.
Cool cool. I never called hazel brown. I have hazel eyes, but I like brown.
Yeah, all eyes are blue under the pigmentation layer. The one that I wish we knew is if human phenotype differences could have been the result of breeding with other hominins. I wish humanity were mature enough to delve into such things without some inbred prejudice nonsense. It would be funny to find white skin and blue eyes are not originally homo sapien traits.
It is funny to me that I like eyes that are weakly brown enough to show a vibrant amber, while I have hazel which is just barely on the flip side of just enough brown to only show around the center of you look closely, buy shifts blue into a greyish green with more of a bluish fringe.
I hear ya there, and I want to clarify: hazel is not variegated/multicolored, it is used to describe eyes with changing colors. Mine can go through entire hue ranges, depending on an array of factors like emotion, time of day, attire, surroundings, etc. In short, having specks of gold or amber doesn’t make an eye color “hazel” anymore than having freckles makes a person a witch. Oh wait, no. That last one is true, sorry.
I’ve always thought that “hazel eyes” meant, well, hazel eyes 😀 As in a sort of a reddish or lighter brown.
Looks like the 'ole Oxford English Dictionary (for American English) says
Hunh. I was today years old when I learned:
Oo interesting that there’s a difference in reflectivity