It seems to me that there are a lot of women here with green eyes.

One thing I've always wondered is where to draw the line between green and hazel eyes. My eyes were more hazel when I was a kid but have gotten greener as I've gotten older. My husband's eyes are definitely hazel-- honey colored. My daughter clearly has the same color as me and I can't decide on my son whether he's going to be green or hazel-- they change too much.

Patience, you have green eyes, don't you?

My grandmother had violet eyes. They do exist. Her heritage was Norwegian/Swedish.

I've always thought of hazel eyes as a combo of green and golden brown. Is that right?

My sister's eyes tend to change depending on what colors she's wearing. Her eyes have a honey brown ring right around the pupil and then they turn more green. When she wears some colors, her eyes look brown or hazel, and other colors they look bright green. And sometimes they even look grey.

Hmm I was certain blue eyes were the rarest. I've seen many people of Middle Eastern origin with green eyes, while blue eyes seem to be limited to Northern Europe. I got my green eyes from my dad, but both his parents had blue eyes. My sister has blue eyes, too, but my mom's eyes are brown. And my husband and both my kids have blue eyes, talk about recessive genes!
Angie, so you have the rarest combination!

Patience, my eyes have also turned more green with age. I think I'm officially green eyed instead of hazel now. I guess that makes me a recessive freak, LOL.

I always thought hazel was EITHER brown + green OR green + blue? My eyes used to be green-blue. If I wore blue or purple, they'd look blue and if I wore green or brown, they'd look green. Nowadays, they just look green no matter what I wear. They certainly never looked as blue as my DD's eyes are, and there's no way anyone would have ever thought I had any brown in them at all.

There are no blue eyes in my entire family. My dad has hazel eyes (our coloring is very very similar). My mom, brother and sister all have brown eyes. My sister's eyes are a unique shade of brown that I can only describe as auburn, like her hair. Her hair isn't a gingery red - it is very deep dark red - and she has no freckles either. She has olive skin tone that is unique to her compared to the rest of my pale family. Her coloring is quite stunning - and rare. She almost looks mediterrean, except for her hair. My mom always said this was her Irish coming out? (My mom is mostly Irish, whereas my dad is English, French and German).

My girls got their blue eyes from their father's side. He has brown eyes and hair but some of his siblings have blue eyes. DD14 has navy blue eyes, and DD16's are more like denim. Scandanavian blonde runs in his family as well - the kind of blonde that never turns dishwatery and which makes one's eyebrows and lashes appear white!

DH has green eyes. Maybe because we've been together for 7 years my eyes are turning his shade? His mom has piercing baby blues - a gorgeous, memorable shade. As does one of his brothers. His other two brothers have brown eyes.

Angie, I asked DH this question this morning (I call him the human google) and he started quoting statistics. He agreed with you that blonde was more rare than red. His reasoning is that red, while also rare, dispersed more widely to other populations, which is why some people have reddish brown hair. Whereas blonde <insert some complicated explanation I can't remember> did not so easily spread. I then did a quick google search myself, saw most of the cites mentioned red, not blonde. And remembered albinism!

I think you and DH may actually be right about this, and google is wrong. For one thing, DH is rarely wrong. <grin>. And also I am thinking that this is why so many cultures value blondes and want blonde hair? Blonde may seem more common to us simply because it's so easy to get it from a bottle.

1. Black

2. Red

3. Brown

4. Green (I have green eyes and it wasn't until my thirties that I appreciated their uniqueness!)

Genetics is extremely interesting. Especially when ethnicities mix and genes get thrown back after many generations. Throw in mutations and it’s a mind blow.

I wouldn’t have thought that green eyes were the rarest either. I see people with green eyes all the time! Science breaks eye colour into these categories:

o Brown
o Amber
o Hazel
o Green
o Blue
o Grey
o Red (albino)
o Violet (albino)

Marianne, green stems from brown which is why we see Middle Eastern, African and Asian people with green eyes. I am also the only person in 5 generations to have green eyes. Crazy. It comes from the Indonesian side which was brown and mutated. The Dutch side is ALL blue. My mother was Eurasian with blue eyes (half Indonesian and half Dutch). Her cousins were Eurasian too, but looked more Asian than anything else and married Indonesian blokes. They both gave birth to BLONDE babies with bright blue eyes. Another crazy.

Shiny, I think that red hair can get lumped with “Auburn hair” in the articles that I read which is to hubby's point! (I guess I'm a mutated freak too).

Also, I used to think that amber and hazel were the same thing, but scientifically they are not. Amber eyes are one solid colour whereas hazel eyes are speckled green and brown.

My eyes have not changed colour over time at all. It's interesting that others have.

There are red heads throughout South America (added in by the European explorers/insert your own term here) so maybe that adds to the "red" group.
I hadn't thought about that.

Angie, I never realized green was so uncommon either. I am only one in my immediate and extended family with green eyes and once was made to feel bad about it as a child (by a nosy, horrible distant relative). I found an early color photograph (where the photographer colored in the pigments) of a long deceased aunt once and she had green eyes and nearly identical hair color!
My dad's eldest sister. He was happy to see how similar we looked.

Both my children have green eyes and I've noticed a curious thing. Their eyes become a beautiful, deeper shade of green when they cry and their eyes fill with tears. It can be so distracting when one is trying to deal with the matter at hand!

Wow, this thread has really become interesting. So cool to read about all the genetic patterns going on in everyone's families.

I'm afraid there are no such mysteries in mine, however. You can see the split, straight down the middle. My Mum and sister have blue/grey eyes, and my Dad and I have hazel (though his are lighter). Our hair is interesting, though. My sister and I are both much fairer than our parents, who have dark brown (well, now mostly grey) hair. I know they were both blonde as children, but by they time they were adults they definitely had dark brown hair, while my sister and I have hung on to quite a bit of our blonde. We have a bit of Swedish ancestry and lot of German, so it's not really surprising, but it's still strange compared to our parents.

Out of my whole family (and I have a huge family) only myself, my sister and one of our uncles have curly hair. Everyone else has straight.

Also interesting how so many people find green eyes more common than blue. For me it's definitely the opposite- I've known scores of blue-eyed people in my lifetime, but can only think of two with true green eyes, my high school best friend, and my boyfriend. Weird.

Debora, my eyes are green and I've noticed they do the same thing when I cry! I think it's the fact that when you cry your eyes become red, and red is opposite on the color wheel from green. Red makes the green appear more vibrant/deeper, and vice/versa. That's my theory, anyway. It's possible the eyes really do change color. Could have something to do with the eye tissue being irritated when you cry, and it changes how the tissue reflects the light.

I guess I am the most "boring" person here (along with the many other Indian ladies). I have black hair and brown eyes and they don't change colors or anything special. I can't even dye my hair because anything other than black would look weird.

My grandpa has blue-gray eyes and is the only one in my family to have any color other than brown. Not sure where it comes from but it certainly points to my mom's side of the family being something other than Indian.

I'm also going to have to insist that red hair is the least common. Blonde is not limited to northern Europe. Natural blonde hair can be found all over Europe, even in northern Italy and some parts of the Middle East. Red hair OTOH is much scarcer.

Maya, you just echoed my thoughts My ancestry going back atleast a few generations is pukka Indian. Black hair and brown eyes all the way. The eyes go darker or lighter but always a brown. Explains my fascination with colored contacts when they first came out. And I have this tiny desire to add red highlights to my hair

My eyes are a honey color circle around the pupil and then green out from there. I always thought they were called hazel.
In my life I have found hazel/green eyes like mine to be rare, except on this forum where it seems they are more common!
Angie, we'll have to compare green eye color when we see each other.

Niva, have you ever had henna in your hair? Last time I was in India, I had red henna highlights put in and loved them. No one this side of the Atlantic does this service though, so I could not maintain it. Lots of places do henna rinses but if I ask about henna highlights, people look at me like I have two heads. Anyway, normally I would not touch my hair color as I think highlights look a bit fake in black hair, but the henna allowed my natural color to come through and had a nice subtlety. If there is one thing I just don't like, it's chunky/stripey highlights.

There are certain traits in my family that give away our Persian-ness. My grandpa's blue eyes are one of them, but I also have cousins with natural reddish-brown hair (auburn I guess) and lots of relatives with very fair coloring. My mother does not look Indian at all. When she tells people she is Indian, they usually assume she must be north Indian because she is so light. Somehow I ended up looking pukka Indian too though. I do not know how this happened, as both my parents do not look very Indian...maybe I was adopted :p

How about your brother Maya, does he look pukka Indian?
When I saw a pic of your Mom and Dad my instant thought was, Maya looks just like her Mom and her Dad. Very interesting how someone can look just like both.

This thread is so much fun!

The most unusual coloring I've ever seen was on a high school friend who was 100% Finnish by heritage. Wavy yellow-blond hair, ruddy pink skin, and black eyes. At least, they were such dark grey that they appeared black. She was very striking!

No one has mentioned people with eyes of two different colors. That's also striking!

I have grey-green eyes that sometimes look bluish, and blonde hair, so I gues I have that rare combination too!

I can't wait to see what colour of eyes the Chickadee will have. Right now they're just that generic Caucasian newborn blue. I do know they won't be brown because the combination of her birth mother's eye colour and her birth father's eye colour (blue and hazel) scientifically cannot produce brown eyes.

I looked over the web a very little and got a bit of information. All light colored eyes (pretty much everything but brown) will reflect other colors so they can all appear to change colors based on what you're wearing etc. Concerning hazel, I couldn't really get a precise definition or a definition of green to compare for that matter, but I think the idea is that hazel will have a variation of colors within the eye-- it's just that there can be a wide variation. I also read that it's often accepted that hazel eyes means you have a brown or blue ring (or both) at the very outer edge of the iris. This makes me suspect that even though I say I have green eyes, they may technically be hazel. Maybe green is rarer because a lot of people who think they have green eyes have a green hazel color. I got my green eyes from my grandfather and everyone else in my family has brown eyes. (Brown eyes are beautiful, Maya, so soulful.) But one thing I always thought was interesting is that my grandmother and my mother as she gets older have a dark blue ring on the outer edge of their iris that seems to grow with age.

Edit: I never knew about amber eyes. My husband's eyes are definitely amber. All eyes and colors are so beautiful...

I think my brother's coloring is actually darker than any of us San. Or maybe it just looks that way because he has dark hair all over :p I have my mom's eyes and body shape, and my dad's nose.

Well the fun thing about my very medium skin tone and nondescript eye and hair color is that I am always amused to hear where people *think* I am from. When I was in France, I was surprised to hear so many people think I was Spanish! I have never been to Spain and I haven't known a whole lot of Spanish people in my life to really know what they look like, but I have always assumed they wouldn't look too different from their neighbors, which would mean nothing at all like me.

Oh, Patience, I like having brown eyes. I would not really feel like me with any other color. I went through a phase as a kid where I wanted colored contacts, but I'm over it. I'd take my brown doe eyes over any other shape and color any day! They are probably my best feature.

Yes, another boring non-caucasian here with dark brown eyes and black hair (and no desire whatsoever to change that except to cover gray at some point!). My husband is a blue-eyed blonde and both our children have brown hair with coppery highlights and brown eyes (though much lighter than mine).

Very interesting!
My husband and his brother are mixed European-Arab (Iraqi) heritage and polar opposites. My husband has light brown hair with blue blue eyes and his brother got the "classic" Arab coloring. You never know!

I don't think black hair and brown eyes are boring at all. Common does not mean boring. When I was younger, all I wanted was black hair. I wished wished wished for it. I think it is so striking. There is still a small part of me that wishes I could dye my hair black, but I would look ridiculous and fake, not striking at all. Oh well, the grass is always greener....

Interesting, I have always had green eyes, never hazel, and nowhere near blue or brown. They have never changed one way or the other.

Rare,? I always wished they would pick a team..blue or brown.

Ana, I meant boring in terms of not much to discuss - I mean what can you really say about black hair (I guess there is the blue black vs red black). I love my black hair and have never wished for it to be any other color than what it is.

Funny story - I found out not too long ago that my green-eyed black haired father-in-law (well his hair is all white now but in his younger days his hair appeared in photos to be a very dark brown/black) actually colored his hair dark! Apparently, my mother-in-law preferred her men with black hair!

Oh good, Shana. I was worried that people were starting to feel bad. I always had sort of non-descript light brown/dark blonde hair. Where I grew up, hardly anyone had black hair, so it was very exotic and unusual to me as a preteen and teenager.

That's funny how your MIL preferred dark hair so your FIL dyed his. I guess everyone has their different things they like, don't they?

That's how I meant it too Shana. I think you have ideal coloring Ana, since you like to experiment so much with your hair color. If you had black hair that would not be an option. People with black hair usually don't look good with any other color. The only thing I don't like about having black hair is that it is very flat, and really can't be any other way. I would like to have some variation, but it's not really possible.

When I was in Sweden I stood out like a sore thumb among all the blonde heads. I was surprised at how, um, enthusiastic people were about my hair, but it really was a very rare sight there to even see brown hair, let alone black. And it was a weird experience for me because most people I know are not natural blondes so seeing them everywhere was unusual. I got lots of compliments!

I love this discussion! I find genetics fascinating. I guess I'm one of the "rare" ones with blonde hair and green eyes. I have always loved my eye color; I find it to be one of my best features. Out of curiosity, when did those of you with green eyes develop your eye color? I've read that babies' eye color becomes their permanent color by about 12 months. I, however, had blue eyes until I was about 5 or 6 years old, and then they turned green. My mom still mourns the loss of my bright blue eyes! My sibs both have blue eyes, though.

Here’s an interesting one for you. I have a thin honey-colored ring around my pupil in both eyes. BUT, the rest of my right eye is blue while the rest of my left eye is a greenish-gray color. People don’t usually notice unless they spend a lot time close to my face (my dentist noticed once!) OR if I cry, at which point it becomes obvious. I usually say my eyes are blue. I have sometimes wondered if they are hazel, but I don't know what hazel means. Based on what Patience said above re: the ring around the iris, maybe I do?