Auburn hair is a human hair color, a variety of red hair, most commonly described as reddish-brown in color. Auburn hair ranges in shades from medium to dark. It can be found with a wide array of skin tones and eye colors. The chemical pigments that cause the coloration of auburn hair are frequently pheomelanin with high levels of eumelanin.[ citation needed ]
"Auburn" can be used to describe many shades of reddish hair with similar definitions or hues. It is often conflated in popular usage with Titian hair. Whereas Titian hair is a brownish shade of red hair, auburn hair is specifically defined as including the actual color red. Most definitions of Titian hair describe it as a brownish-orange color, [1] [2] but some describe it as being reddish. [3] This is in reference to red hair itself, not the color red.
Auburn encompasses the color maroon, but so too do chestnut and burgundy. In contrast with the two, auburn is more red in color, whereas chestnut is more brown, and burgundy is more purple; chestnut hair is also often referred to as "chestnut-brown".
The word "auburn" comes from the Old French word alborne, which meant blond, coming from Latin word alburnus ("off-white"). The first recorded use of auburn in English was in 1430. [4] [5] The word was sometimes corrupted into abram, for example in early (pre-1685) folios of Coriolanus , Thomas Kyd's Soliman and Perseda (1588) and Thomas Middleton's Blurt, Master Constable (1601). [6]
Auburn hair is common among people of northern and western European descent, [7] but it is rare elsewhere. Auburn hair occurs most frequently in Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway and Sweden), Britain, Ireland, continental Germanic Europe (Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg), France and northern Iberia, Poland, and Russia. This hair color is less common farther south and southeast, but can occur somewhat regularly in Southern Europe (more so in Spain, and to some extent Portugal and Italy). It can also be found in other parts of the world colonized by genetically European people, such as North America, South America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Siberia, etc.[ citation needed ]
Brown is a color. It can be considered a composite color, but it is mainly a darker shade of orange. In the CMYK color model used in printing and painting, brown is usually made by combining the colors orange and black.
Red hair, also known as orange hair or ginger hair, is a human hair color found in 1–2% of the world population, appearing with greater frequency (2–6%) among people of Northern or Northwestern European ancestry and lesser frequency in other populations. It is most common in individuals homozygous for a recessive allele on chromosome 16 that produces an altered version of the MC1R protein.
Human hair color is the pigmentation of human hair follicles and shafts due to two types of melanin: eumelanin and pheomelanin. Generally, the more melanin present, the darker the hair. Its tone depends on the ratio of black or brown eumelanin to yellow or red pheomelanin. Levels of melanin can vary over time, causing a person's hair color to change, and it is possible for one person to have hair follicles of more than one color. Some hair colors are associated with some ethnic groups because of observed higher frequency of particular hair color within their geographical region, e.g. straight, dark hair amongst East Asians, Southeast Asians, Polynesians, some Central Asians, and Native Americans; a large variety of dark, fair, curly, straight, wavy or bushy amongst Europeans, West Asians, some Central Asians, and North Africans; and curly, dark, and uniquely helical hair amongst Sub Saharan Africans. Bright red hair is found in some European populations, and hair often turns gray, white, or "silver" with age.
Blond or blonde, also referred to as fair hair, is a human hair color characterized by low levels of eumelanin, the dark pigment. The resultant visible hue depends on various factors, but always has some yellowish color. The color can be from the very pale blond to reddish "strawberry" blond or golden-brownish ("sandy") blond colors. Occasionally, the state of being blond, and specifically the occurrence of blond traits in a predominantly dark or colored population are referred to as blondism.
A color term is a word or phrase that refers to a specific color. The color term may refer to human perception of that color which is usually defined according to the Munsell color system, or to an underlying physical property. There are also numerical systems of color specification, referred to as color spaces.
Brown hair, also referred to as brunette, is the second-most common human hair color, after black hair. It varies from light brown to dark hair. It is characterized by higher levels of the dark pigment eumelanin and lower levels of the pale pigment pheomelanin.
Umber is a natural earth pigment consisting of iron oxide and manganese oxide; it has a brownish color that can vary among shades of yellow, red, and green. Umber is considered one of the oldest pigments known to humans, first seen in Ajanta Caves in 200 BC – 600 AD. Umber's advantages are its highly versatile color, warm tone, and quick drying abilities. While some sources indicate that umber's name comes from its geographic origin in Umbria, other scholars suggest that it derives from the Latin word umbra, which means "shadow". The belief that its name derives from the word for shadow is fitting, as the color helps create shadows. The color is primarily produced in Cyprus. Umber is typically mined from open pits or underground mines and ground into a fine powder that is washed to remove impurities. In the 20th century, the rise of synthetic dyes decreased the demand for natural pigments such as umber.
Bay is a hair coat color of horses, characterized by a reddish-brown or brown body color with a black point coloration on the mane, tail, ear edges, and lower legs. Bay is one of the most common coat colors in many horse breeds.
At right is displayed the color traditionally called liver.
Maroon is a brownish crimson color that takes its name from the French word marron, or chestnut. "Marron" is also one of the French translations for "brown".
The silver or silver dapple (Z) gene is a dilution gene that affects the black base coat color and is associated with Multiple Congenital Ocular Abnormalities. It will typically dilute a black mane and tail to a silvery gray or flaxen color, and a black body to a chocolaty brown, sometimes with dapples. It is responsible for a group of coat colors in horses called "silver dapple" in the west, or "taffy" in Australia. The most common colors in this category are black silver and bay silver, referring to the respective underlying coat color.
In many languages, the colors described in English as "blue" and "green" are colexified, i.e., expressed using a single umbrella term. To render this ambiguous notion in English, linguists use the blend word grue, from green and blue, a term coined by the philosopher Nelson Goodman—with an unrelated meaning—in his 1955 Fact, Fiction, and Forecast to illustrate his "new riddle of induction".
Taupe is a dark gray-brown color. The word derives from the French noun taupe meaning "mole". The name originally referred only to the average color of the French mole, but beginning in the 1940s, its usage expanded to encompass a wider range of shades.
Chestnut is a hair coat color of horses consisting of a reddish-to-brown coat with a mane and tail the same or lighter in color than the coat. Chestnut is characterized by the absolute absence of true black hairs. It is one of the most common horse coat colors, seen in almost every breed of horse.
Horses exhibit a diverse array of coat colors and distinctive markings. A specialized vocabulary has evolved to describe them.
Black is a hair coat color of horses in which the entire hair coat is black. It is not uncommon to mistake dark chestnuts or bays for black.
Seal brown is a hair coat color of horses characterized by a near-black body color; with black points, the mane, tail and legs; but also reddish or tan areas around the eyes, muzzle, behind the elbow and in front of the stifle. The term is not to be confused with "brown", which is used by some breed registries to refer to either a seal brown horse or to a dark bay without the additional characteristics of seal brown.
Shades of brown can be produced by combining red, yellow, and black pigments, or by a combination of orange and black—illustrated in the color box. The RGB color model, that generates all colors on computer and television screens, makes brown by combining red and green light at different intensities. Brown color names are often imprecise, and some shades, such as beige, can refer to lighter rather than darker shades of yellow and red. Such colors are less saturated than colors perceived to be orange. Browns are usually described as light or dark, reddish, yellowish, or gray-brown. There are no standardized names for shades of brown; the same shade may have different names on different color lists, and sometimes one name can refer to several very different colors. The X11 color list of web colors has seventeen different shades of brown, but the complete list of browns is much longer.
Iron oxide red is a generic name of a ferric oxide pigment of reddish colors. Multiple shades based on both anhydrous Fe
2O
3 and its hydrates were known to painters since prehistory. The pigments were originally obtained from natural sources, since the 20th century they are mostly synthetic. These substances form one of the most commercially important groups of pigments, and their names sometimes reflect the location of a natural source, later transferred to the synthetic analog. Well-known examples include the Persian Gulf Oxide with 75% Fe
2O
3 and 25% silica, Spanish red with 85% of oxide, Tuscan red.
Titian is a tint of red hair, most commonly described as brownish-orange in color.