*what* colour, exactly, are hazel eyes?

[zweisamkeit]

i've never been able to define my own eye colour (which garners many an odd look from others). there's a ring around the pupil that's a bright rusty orange (with a slight tinge of brown), and the rest of the iris changes from greyish to blueish to greenish (although whatever colour it is always has a greyish hue to it).

so i thought, "well, why don't you see what hazel eyes are?" and durned if i can find an actual answer! i get results that say anything from "light golden brown" to "greeny blue". so is hazel a catchall phrase for "i don't know *what* colour it is!" ?

i know people used to think that eyes were only blue or brown, and no inbetween (at least if my old "guess who" board game is to be trusted ), but now it seems to be "brown, blue, green, grey, black, and hazel". but hazel apparently is a catchall phrase (or people are using it incorrectly).

so, my friends, *what* exactly is the colour of hazel eyes?

[Du_Hast]

Hazel.

[Anamorphic]

Well, simple answer, as Du_Hast managed to put so concisely and elegantly, is that they're hazel. It's a color. Check the crayon box!

But the reason you might be having trouble pinning it down, though, is that we people with hazel eyes are a bit... special. Some might even say "freaky". Our exact eye color tends to shift a bit depending on what we're wearing.

[Anamorphic]

Erm, since this is General Questions, I suppose I should say, "our eye color APPEARS to shift". As far as I know, they don't literally change.

[zweisamkeit]

well i *know* hazel is a colour (you're talking to the person who was asked what was the colour of the car that needed an oil change, and answered, "it's burnt sienna" ).

but everyone i've ever talked to, which includes people who do or don't think they have hazel eyes, seem to think that hazel eye colour is completely different from hazel anything else colour , which is why i'm asking.

i mean, my eyes aren't a light yellowy brown, but a few people have said to me, "well, i guess your eyes are hazel."

[leechbabe]

Ditto what Anamorphic said. I've got hazel coloured eyes as do my mum and my SO. Our eye colour is very much a reflection of what we are wearing, green and blue seem to work especially well.

I suppose to find out the true colour we could all get naked and check it out but its 4.30 in the AM here and I'm just not up to seeing my mum naked at this blessed hour.

[Anamorphic]

Originally posted by leechbabe
Ditto what Anamorphic said. I've got hazel coloured eyes as do my mum and my SO. Our eye colour is very much a reflection of what we are wearing, green and blue seem to work especially well.

I suppose to find out the true colour we could all get naked and check it out but its 4.30 in the AM here and I'm just not up to seeing my mum naked at this blessed hour.

Sounds like a party to me! Except for the whole mum thing, yeah.

[Helen's Eidolon]

I was under the impression that hazel eyes are eyes that are browny-green, a touch yellowish sometimes. Definitely not blue/green/gray.

My eyes are quite similar to yours, they are blue/green/grey with a yellow ring in my irises. No one has ever told me, nor hae I ever thought my eyes are hazel. They are "light".

[Helen's Eidolon]

Sorry, afterthought:

On my driver's license, eye colour is listed as "pers": the french word for the eyecolour that is "blue-green".

[Colibri]

According to Merriam-Webster, as a color hazel is "a light brown to strong yellowish brown." My brother has "hazel" eyes, and that's what they are: a light brown.

If people are using it to describe other eye colors, then they are misusing it.

However, if people have light brown eyes it means they have less melanin in the iris than those with dark brown eyes. It is probably more common for them to show flecks or areas of other colors such as green, gray, or blue if the pigment is distributed unevenly. Therefore it may be typical for people whose base color is light brown to show multicolored eyes, or appear to have a variable eye color.

[Waverly]

The problem is that hazel, in the context of eye color, isn’t a single shade but some type of blend. Normally it’s understood to have some sort of mossy-green character, associated with an amber hued lipid sitting atop a the normal pigment of the eye.

If brown eyes (rich in melanin) are at one end of the spectrum and blue (melanin poor) at the other, hazel would sit somewhere near the middle. This is not to say eye color inheritance follows a simple Mendelian pattern, as the shades that differ distinctly from brown or blue would seem to indicate.

[Waverly]

As for the blue question, the hazel nut that the color is supposed to be reminiscent of, is amber-greenish. No blue at all.

[Inky-]

Hang on. My eyes have always been defined as "hazel" -- even says so on my drivers licence, a legally recognized document! They are green with a little brown surrounding the pupil. I thought hazel meant two-toned eyes? No?

[Colibri]

Originally posted by Inky-
I thought hazel meant two-toned eyes? No?

The dictionary doesn't think so.

Neither does Cecil. He says hazel is medium brown.

Some info on how eye color is determined:

At one time scientists thought that a single gene pair, in a dominant/recessive inheritance pattern, controlled human eye color. The allele for brown eyes was considered dominant over the allele for blue eyes. The genetic basis for eye color is actually far more complex. At the present, three gene pairs controlling human eye color are known. Two of the gene pairs occur on chromosome pair 15 and one occurs on chromosome pair 19. The bey 2 gene, on chromosome 15, has a brown and a blue allele. A second gene, located on chromosome 19 (the gey gene) has a blue and a green allele. A third gene, bey 1, located on chromosome 15, is a central brown eye color gene.

Geneticists have designed a model using the bey 2 and gey gene pairs that explains the inheritance of blue, green and brown eyes. In this model the bey 2 gene has a brown and a blue allele. The brown allele is always dominant over the blue allele so even if a person is heterozygous (one brown and one blue allele) for the bey 2 gene on chromosome 15 the brown allele will be expressed. The gey gene also has two alleles, one green and one blue. The green allele is dominant to the blue allele on either chromosome but is recessive to the brown allele on chromosome 15. This means that there is a dominance order among the two gene pairs. If a person has a brown allele on chromosome 15 and all other alleles are blue or green the person will have brown eyes. If there is a green allele on chromosome 19 and the rest of the alleles are blue, eye color will be green. Blue eyes will occur only if all four alleles are for blue eyes. This model explains the inheritance of blue, brown and green eyes but cannot account for gray, hazel or multiple shades of brown, blue, green and gray eyes. It cannot explain how two blue-eyed parents can produce a brown-eyed child or how eye color can change over time. This suggests that there are other genes, yet to be discovered, that determine eye color or that modify the expression of the known eye color genes.

[Boyo Jim]

My first driver's license said "hazel". That's what people told me I had. Now my license says "green" ([i]actually GRN) because that's what I finally decided they were, mostly.

I can't even figure out whether my eyes changed color, or people just didn't know. I too have a green/light-brown(tan?) outer/inner color scheme, and I think the varying amounts and intensities of combinations make "eye color" somewhat subjective.

[zweisamkeit]

so what would anyone say my eye colour is, then?

ring of rust around the pupil with the rest being grey, green, or blue (changes shades quite often, but always grey-tinted).

i'd *like* to have a proper eye colour listed on my driver's license.

[Helen's Eidolon]

Go with "pers". Who cares if it's foreign.

Or you could do as I do, and inform anyone who asks that they're blue/green/gray and let 'em decide for themselves.

(Wow, your eyes really do sound quite identical to mine. I've never met anyone else who has different coloured rings in their eyes, too.)

[tsunamisurfer]

Originally posted by Waverly
The problem is that hazel, in the context of eye color, isn’t a single shade but some type of blend. Normally it’s understood to have some sort of mossy-green character, associated with an amber hued lipid sitting atop a the normal pigment of the eye.

This is a circular definition in two ways.

First, moss comes in many hues. Second, the term "hazel" is commonly misused--and has been for years. Thus, your associating the phrase "normally understood" with this vague term answers nothing. (Though I was initially impressed!)

Hazel is not a variant of blue or blue-green or medium green. Instead, it's a yellowish brown, though there's no commonly understood term to really define it. Most people use the term "hazel" as a catch all.

[tomndebb]

My eyes have been described as hazel (whatever that means).

I have a very narrow dark blue-gray ring next to the whites,
a broader (but still narrow) medium turquoise ring inside that,
then a lot of strips of yellow-brown and green (with some dark brown) in a radiating pattern around the lens,
while immediately next to the lens is an irregularly shaped circle of medium brown.

In addition to hazel, my eyes have been described (depending on my age, the observer, the weather, the color of my clothes, the lighting of the room, and apparently what I had for breakfast) as blue, green, gray, and indecipherable.

[tomndebb]

My eyes have been described as hazel (whatever that means).

I have a very narrow dark blue-gray ring next to the whites,
a broader (but still narrow) medium turquoise ring inside that,
then a lot of strips of yellow-brown and green (with some dark brown) in a radiating pattern around the lens,
while immediately next to the lens is an irregularly shaped circle of medium brown.

In addition to hazel, my eyes have been described (depending on my age, the observer, the weather, the color of my clothes, the lighting of the room, and apparently what I had for breakfast) as blue, green, gray, and indecipherable.

[Waverly]

Originally posted by tsunamisurfer


This is a circular definition in two ways.

First, moss comes in many hues. Second, the term "hazel" is commonly misused--and has been for years. Thus, your associating the phrase "normally understood" with this vague term answers nothing. (Though I was initially impressed!)

Hazel is not a variant of blue or blue-green or medium green. Instead, it's a yellowish brown, though there's no commonly understood term to really define it. Most people use the term "hazel" as a catch all.

The color may have been used as a catch all, but there is an origin to the term. Perhaps you missed the fact that I followed up immediately with a link to [an admittedly poor] photo of a hazel nut in order to clarify the hue to which the term referred.

I could link pictures of eyes or contacts labeled as hazel that bear the mossy-green color I’m referring to, but to what end? It’s just someone else’s idea and carries no weight. I’d suggest that the best definition we can come up with is the color's namesake, but even then I’ve seen the nuts vary in color from true green to amber. It’s just my opinion that the color indicates a swampy blend of the two - but I'm biased, that is the color of my own eyes.

[Waverly]

I’ve looked into a bit more. Seems no one is the authority on color definitions. I’m also going to have to admit that most contact lens companies picture hazel as very light brown, and the color I’m trying so hard to flog as hazel is referred to light or pale green. I’ll plead no contest for my POV.

[foolsguinea]

My driver's license says hazel. In point of fact, my eyes are greyish (actually very low-saturation aqua) with little yellow whorls around the pupils. (And some rusty hazelish streaks in those.) A lot of people have no idea that hazel is a color, and just use the term for multicolored eyes like mine. I fact, this use is how I first encountered the term. (I prefer "whorled.") I don't mind people calling my eyes hazel too much, as the central ring is sort of that color. I'll also take "blue," "grey," "golden," or "green." (My eyes barely ever look green. It's only a trick of the light. But if someone says, "You have green eyes?" I say, "Yes." No one has called me "golden-eyed" yet, though .)

What sticks in my craw is that some people use "hazel" to mean any eyes that appear to change color. I have seen eyes that change from hazel to gray. I have also seen eyes that are a particularly vivid green-blue, thus green in some lights & blue in others. This, properly speaking, is not hazel. But people don't know any better. They think that's the definition of the word. Here, let me introduce to my friends who have monochromatic hazel eyes!

[rsa]

Originally posted by foolsguinea
What sticks in my craw is that some people use "hazel" to mean any eyes that appear to change color

So what do we call it instead? My DL says that I have "hazel" eyes and I have always considered that a catch-all. Although now I think my eyes change from blue to grey to green. I guess "pers" might fit, but I've never heard of that. Can we call our eye color anything we want? COOL? SEXY? What will the DPS accept?

[DhaliClone]

Okay, I'm wondering the same thing, but all of this talk is really confusing. Can someone, derived from all of these posts, simply say what the eye colors are?

What is Hazel, by definition?
What are my eyes (changing from blue to green, and they DO change)?

[Tars Tarkas]

sienna
chocolate
sandybrown

Which do you all consider more hazel? I'd say it is more sandy brown and chocolate then sienna.


And on Eyes changing colors, The Master speaks

[zweisamkeit]

yes, but cecil's column seems to focus on eyes that used to be one colour, than drastically changed to another and stayed that way (ie - guy has brown eyes and when he's 30 they changed to grey). what DhaliClone and others like her (and me) are talking about are eyes whose colour seems to change from day to day. apart from the ring i mentioned, the rest changes from grey to green to blue. it's not the colours i'm wearing that day either, because in order to actually check my eye colour, my face is pressed right up to the mirror anyway, so it's all i see.

at least i can rule out "hazel" for mine. maybe when i get my license renewed, i'll list eye colour as: "f***ed up"

[elfkin477]

I was going to start a question about Hazel eyes, or at least what people commonly say is hazel (not a shade of brown resembling the hazel nut) so I hope people don't get offended by the hijack... when it comes to the genetic level, are "hazel" eyes just a subset of green or brown? I have eyes like described by the OP- except with brown rings and blue rather than gray being the most consistant- and since there's no handy label, I just call them blue; since both my parents have blue eyes, and blue is recessive, that must be what they are anyway. The majority of people I know who say their eyes are hazel do so because their eyes are also "changable" mostly from brown to greenish but are their eyes really any different than a person's whose change from blue to green and/or gray?

Originally posted by zweisamkeit
yes, but cecil's column seems to focus on eyes that used to be one colour, than drastically changed to another and stayed that way (ie - guy has brown eyes and when he's 30 they changed to grey). what DhaliClone and others like her (and me) are talking about are eyes whose colour seems to change from day to day. apart from the ring i mentioned, the rest changes from grey to green to blue. it's not the colours i'm wearing that day either, because in order to actually check my eye colour, my face is pressed right up to the mirror anyway, so it's all i see.

Besides what I'm wearing, my eyes change when I'm sick, when I've been crying, or when I haven't gotten enough sleep. They're the most brilliantly colored, an aqua marine, when I've only gotten a couple of hours sleep, and I certainly don't wear that color to bed