Brown hair

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Brown hair is the second most common human hair color, and only black hair is claimed by more people worldwide. In 2005, the magazine Allure asked American women what color hair they expected the first female president of the United States to have. Seventy-six percent said brown. That single data point sits at the center of a much bigger picture. What is it about brown hair, chemically, that separates it from black at one end and blond at the other? Why does the color turn up so consistently across Europe, the Americas, Asia and Oceania? Sometimes it shades smoothly into black hair, and sometimes into shades close to blond. And why did English borrow the French word brunette to describe mostly women? Men with the same hair color are rarely called anything similar. The answers start with the pigment inside every strand.

• 2. The Pigment Behind The Color

  ›

  Two distinct forms of eumelanin decide where brown hair lands on the color scale. They are black eumelanin and brown eumelanin, distinguished by differences in their polymer bonds. Eumelanin itself is the pigment responsible for brown hair, present in moderate amounts and paired with none of the paler pigment called pheomelanin. Black eumelanin is the darker of the two forms, and brown eumelanin is considerably lighter. A small amount of black eumelanin on its own, with no other pigments present, produces grey hair. A small amount of brown eumelanin alone produces yellow, or blond, hair instead. Hair that starts out naturally blond or red often darkens into brown as a person ages. People with brown hair tend to have medium-thick strands. Brown-haired people are also thought to produce more of the skin-protecting form of eumelanin, which is linked to a more even skin tone. The skin tones associated with brown hair span an enormous range, from the palest complexions to a dark olive tone.

  Deepest brunette marks the darkest end of the range, a chocolate so dark it can look off-black from a distance and gets mistaken for true black hair. Milk chocolate brown, dark chestnut and light chestnut sit further up the scale. Medium brown, sometimes called standard brunette, gets compared to a shade known as Russet brown. Walnut brown reads as a warmer version of that medium tone, close to light chestnut, while caramel brown carries its own warm cast. At the lighter end, light golden brown sits almost at the edge of dirty blond. A dull, flat variant called mousy is sometimes mistaken for dirty blond as well. Light ash brown edges closer still to blond. Auburn brown carries a reddish tint, and a shade called lightest brown can shift toward a mid-blonde look in direct sunlight. Maple brown, named for its resemblance to maple syrup, has a dark golden cast of its own. That range of names for one pigment says nothing yet about where in the world each shade tends to appear.

• 3. A Global Spectrum

  ›

  In Spain, 57 percent of people have brown hair. Within that country, 7 percent are naturally blonde, 26 percent are brunette and 3 percent are redheads. The remaining 10 percent fall into darker or lighter brown categories. Elsewhere in Europe, medium to light brown shades predominate in the northern and central regions, while darker shades take over toward the south. That same medium to light brown pattern is also dominant in Australia and Canada. It holds true among White South Africans in South Africa as well. In the United States, it is dominant among European Americans whose ancestry traces to Northern, Central and Eastern Europe. Dark brown hair in particular is common across the whole continent. It appears among British, Irish, Baltic, Dutch, Flemish, German, Swiss-German, Austrian, Slovenian, Polish, Ukrainian and Russian populations. It also appears among Italian, Spanish, Greek and Portuguese communities in the south, and Bulgarian, Croatian and Serbian communities in the southeast.

  North Africa, including Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, sees brown hair ranging from light to dark, with dark brown the most prevalent shade there. Brown hair also occurs commonly among Australian Aboriginal and Melanesian populations, in a pattern similar to how blond hair appears in those same groups.

  Across the Americas, brown hair appears throughout the Southern Cone: Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, plus central-southern Brazil. It also appears in Colombia, the Andean region of Venezuela, Costa Rica's Central Valley and Puerto Rico. A study of 1,023 students in Chile found brown-black was the most common eye color, reported in 71-89.4 percent of participants. Brown hair itself appeared in 65.8-66.8 percent of that same group. Dark brown hair also turns up among Indigenous American populations.

  In the Middle East, brown hair typically runs medium to dark, though lighter brown shades appear too. Central Asia shows a similar medium to dark brown pattern. Across the Middle East, Central Asia, Afghanistan and South Asia together, brown hair often shades smoothly into black hair rather than standing apart from it. East Asian hair color is mostly brown to black. Darkest brown and dark-to-reddish brown are the most frequent shades there, and darkest brown is sometimes mistaken outright for black. Medium brown appears often as well, and light brown, while less common, still turns up. Even hair that looks black can reveal its true color under light if it carries natural reddish-brown pigment, meaning pheomelanin. As in Europe, East Asian hair tends to darken with age, which is why brown hair shows up more often among younger people. Brown hair is also more common across much of Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam, concentrated among younger people due to pigmentation changes. In South Asia, brown hair typically runs dark, and is sometimes mistaken for black hair as well.

  None of that geography explains why English settled on a French-derived word to describe the color in the first place.

• 4. A Word Divided By Gender

  ›

  The word brunette descends from the French brunet, a diminutive of brun, meaning brown or brown-haired, whose feminine form is brune. That chain of words traces back further to a Proto-Indo-European root, reconstructed as bhrun-, meaning brown or grey. The pronunciation "broon" survives today in Scotland, especially in rural areas. The same sound is simply the word for brown in the Scandinavian languages. Modern English usage has dropped the original diminutive sense entirely. Brunette now typically just describes a brown-haired girl or woman, or the hair color itself. Merriam-Webster defines brunet as a person with brown hair, sometimes paired with a relatively dark complexion. The dictionary spells it brunet for a boy or man and brunette for a girl or woman. In practice, brunet rarely gets used for males. Someone is far more likely to hear "He has brown hair" or "He is brown-haired" than "He is a brunette." Lighter or darker versions of the color get labeled light brunette or dark brunette, but usually only to describe the hair itself, not the person. Nobody typically says "She is a light brunette" to describe someone. The natural phrasing stays "She has light-brown hair." That gap between grammar and everyday speech says nothing yet about what brunette has come to represent in fiction, film and folklore.

• 5. Brunettes In The Public Imagination

  ›

  Anita Loos, who wrote the novel and play "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," answered it with a sequel titled "But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes." A film of the same name followed, starring Jane Russell and Jeanne Crain. That contrast between blondes and brunettes echoes a broader stereotype in Western popular culture. Brunettes get painted as stable, serious, smart and sophisticated, often set against blondes in what gets framed as a lighthearted rivalry rather than simple coexistence.

  The Lady of Shalott, from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem, appears as a brunette in most depictions. The woman in Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is brunette as well.

  In the French folk song "Au clair de la lune," a character named Lubin visits his brunette neighbor at Pierrot's suggestion. The Irish song "The Star of the County Down" closes on a narrator falling for a woman named Rose McCann. The lyrics describe her simply as having "nut-brown" hair.