A portrait of three blond children (1724) by Denner Balthasar.
(
see below) or
fair-hair, is a
hair color characterized by low levels of the dark
pigment eumelanin. The resultant visible hue depends on various factors, but always has some sort of
yellowish color. The color can be from the very
pale blond (caused by a patchy, scarce distribution of pigment) to reddish "strawberry" blond colors or golden-brownish blond colors (the latter with more eumelanin).
Other terms used
From the German for flax or hemp
touw , the expression
tow head literally means someone flaxen haired. Other variations are
towhead or
toe head, the latter being a misspelling that does not relate to the word origin.
Etymology, spelling, and grammar
The word
blond was first attested in
English in 1481 and derives from
Old French blont and meant a "colour midway between golden and light chestnut". It largely replaced the native term
fair, from
Old English fæger. The
French (and thus also the English) word
blond has two possible origins. Some linguists say it comes from
Medieval Latin blundus, meaning
yellow, from
Old Frankish *blund which would relate it to Old English
blonden-feax meaning
grey-haired, from
blondan/blandan meaning
to mix. Also, Old English
beblonden meant
dyed as ancient
Germanic warriors were noted for dying their hair. However, other linguists who desire a
Latin origin for the word say that Medieval Latin
blundus was a vulgar pronunciation of Latin
flavus, also meaning
yellow. Most authorities, especially French, attest the Frankish origin. The word was reintroduced into English in the 17th century from French, and was for some time considered French; in French, "blonde" is a feminine
noun; it describes a woman. "Blond" is an
adjective that refers to the hair itself. A man can have blond hair but he is never a "blonde".
Though many writers of English use the spellings interchangeably, some of them continue to distinguish between the
masculine blond and the
feminine blonde[ from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1996)] and, as such, it is one of the few adjectives in English with separate
masculine and feminine forms, at least in written language. Each of the two forms, however, is pronounced the same way.
American Heritage's
Book of English Usage propounds that this particular use of the term is an example of a "
sexist stereotype [in] that women are primarily defined by their physical characteristics."
(Another hair color word of French origin,
brunet(te), also functions in the same way in orthodox English.)
The word is also occasionally used, with either spelling, to refer to objects that have a color reminiscent of fair hair. Examples include pale wood and
lager beer.
A portrait of three blond children (1724) by Denner Balthasar.
Varieties
Many sub-categories of blond hair have also been defined to describe someone with blond hair more accurately. Common examples include the following:
- blond/flaxen – when distinguished from other varieties, "blond" by itself refers to a light but not whitish blond with no traces of red, gold, or brown. This color is often described as "flaxen".
- yellow – yellow-blond ("yellow" can also be used to refer to hair which has been dyed yellow).
- platinum blond or towheaded – whitish-blond; found naturally almost exclusively in children. "Platinum blond" is often used to describe dyed hair, while "towheaded" is generally left to natural hair color.
- sandy blond – greyish-brownish blond.
- golden blond – rich, golden blond.
- strawberry blond or Venetian blond – light reddish blond.
- dirty blond or dishwater blond – light blond and sandy blond mixed together in stripes (occurs naturally)
- ash-blond – pale or grayish blond.
- bleached blond or peroxide blond – artificial blond slightly less white than platinum blond.
Origins
Natural lighter hair colors occur most often in
Europe and less frequently in other areas.
[, from The Times. Note, the end of the Times article reiterates the disappearing blonde gene hoax; the online version replaced it with a rebuttal.] In northern European populations, the occurrence of blonde hair is very frequent. The hair color gene
MC1R has at least seven variants in Europe giving the continent a wide range of hair and eye shades. Based on recent
genetic information carried out at three
Japanese universities, the date of the genetic
mutation that resulted in blonde hair in Europe has been isolated to about 11,000 years ago during the
last ice age. Before then, Europeans mostly had black hair, which is predominant in the rest of the world.
The consensus explanation for the evolution of light hair is related to the requirement for
Vitamin D synthesis and northern Europe's seasonal deficiency of sunlight.
[Robins, Ashley H. Biological perspectives on human pigmentation. Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 195-208.] Lighter skin is due to a low concentration in pigmentation, thus allowing more sunlight to trigger the production of
Vitamin D. In this way, high frequencies of light hair in Northern latitudes are a result of the light skin adaptation to lower levels of sunlight, which reduces the prevalence of
rickets caused by Vitamin D deficiency.
Geographic distribution
Blond hair is most frequently found among the indigenous peoples of
Northern Europe. The pigmentation of both hair and eyes is lightest around the south of the
Baltic Sea and their darkness increases regularly and almost concentrically around this region. Due to
migration from Europe from the 16th to the 20th centuries, blonds are also found in the
Americas,
Australia,
New Zealand and
South Africa.
Generally, blond hair in Europeans is associated with lighter
eye color (
grey,
blue, and
green) and light (sometimes
freckled)
skin tone. Strong
sunlight also lightens hair of any pigmentation, to varying degrees, and causes many blond people to freckle, especially during childhood.
In
Central,
Western Asia (
Middle East) and
South Asia there is also a low frequency of natural blonds found among some ethnic populations. In
Afghanistan blonds are particularly found among the
Pashtun and
Nuristani people who have a blond hair frequency of one in three.
In
Pakistan the
Kalash tribe sometimes have blond hair.
Blonds are also found in
Turkey (especially in northern (
Caucasus) and western (European) parts of the country), northern and western parts
Iran. The
Levant Israel (especially among the
Ashkenazi, who are of European origin), western
Syria, the
Palestinian territories,
Jordan and
Lebanon) have a low frequency of blonds. Blond hair is also common among some
Berbers of
North Africa, especially in the
Rif.
Aboriginal Australians, especially in the west-central parts of the continent, have a high frequency of natural blond-to-brown hair,
with as many as 90-100% of children having blond hair in some areas.
The trait among Indigenous Australians is primarily associated with children and women and the hair turns more often to a darker brown color, rather than black, as they age.
Blondness is also found in some other parts of the
South Pacific such as the
Solomon Islands Vanuatu and
Fiji. Again there are higher incidences in children but here many adults too carry this indigenous blond mutation.
Some
Berber Guanches populations, particularly the now extinct aboriginal population of
Tenerife, one of the
Canary Islands, were said by 14th century Spanish explorers to exhibit blond hair and blue eyes. Blondness was also reported among
Indigenous peoples in South America known as
Cloud People.
Relation to age
Blond hair is most common in
Caucasian infants and
children,
[Ridley, Matt. Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature. Published by HarperCollins, 2nd ed. 2003, pp. 293-294.] so much so that the term "baby blond" is often used for very light colored hair. Babies may be born with blond hair even among groups where adults rarely have blond hair,
although such natal hair usually falls out quickly. Blond hair tends to turn darker with age, and many children's blond hair turns light, medium, or dark brown before or during their
teenage years.
Cultural views
A depiction of the god
Loki cutting the goddess
Sif's famously golden locks (1920) by
Willy Pogany.
[Byock, Jesse. (Trans.) (2006) The Prose Edda, page 92. Penguin Classics ISBN 0140447555] (wife of Thor) and the major goddess Freyja[From the 13th century Friðþjófs saga hins frœkna:]
And all its gods and goddesses,
He'd think: "Yes!" yellow's Freyja's hair,
A corn-land sea, breeze-waved so fair. are described as blonde. In the
Poetic Edda poem
Rígsþula, the blonde man
Jarl was considered to be the ancestor of the dominant warrior class. In Northern European
folklore,
fairies value blonde hair in humans. Blonde babies are more likely to be stolen and replaced with
changelings, and young blonde women are more likely to be lured away to the land of the fairies.
In European fairy tales, blonde hair was commonly ascribed to the heroes and heroines. This may occur in the text, as in Madame d'Aulnoy's La Belle aux cheveux d'or or The Story of Pretty Goldilocks (The Beauty with Golden Hair), or in illustrations depicting the scenes. One notable exception is Snow White who, because of her mother's wish for a child "as red as blood, as white as snow, as black as ebony," has dark hair. This tendency appears also in more formal literature; in Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote the ideal beauty Dulcinea's "hairs are gold"; in Milton's poem Paradise Lost the noble and innocent Adam and Eve have "golden tresses"
In the early-mid 20th century, Nordicists such as Madison Grant and Alfred Rosenberg associated blonde hair with a Nordic race, which they distinguished from a larger Aryan race that included what they called the non-blonde Alpine race. During World War II, blonde hair was one of the traits used by Nazis to select Slavic children for Germanization.
In contemporary popular culture, it is often stereotyped that men find blonde women more attractive than women with other hair colors. Alfred Hitchcock preferred to cast blonde women for major roles in his films as he believed that the audience would suspect them the least, hence the term "Hitchcock blonde".See also
