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.
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.
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!
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?
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)?
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”
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?
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
