Auburn hair

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
A Uyghur child in Kashgar, China's Xinjiang region, with auburn hair

Auburn hair is a

eumelanin; however, the auburn hair is due to a mutated melanocortin 1 receptor gene in Northwestern European people and by a mutated TYRP1 gene in the Melanesians and Austronesians, both genes that reduce the melanin production of the hair cells.[citation needed
]

Differentiation

Queen Mary I of England was described with either light or dark auburn hair during her early years and reign

"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".

Etymology

The word "auburn" comes from the

Coriolanus, Thomas Kyd's Soliman and Perseda (1588) and Thomas Middleton's Blurt, Master Constable (1601).[6]

Geographic distribution

Auburn hair is common among people of northern and western European descent,

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.

Auburn is sometimes seen among the

Formosa), but it is absent in the later Han Chinese immigrants. With them it is not due to the mutated MC1R gene but to the mutated TYRP1
gene, both of which reduce melanin production.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Titian" in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary
  2. ^ "Titian" in The Free Dictionary
  3. ^ "Titian" on Dictionary.com
  4. ^ "Auburn" in the Online Etymology Dictionary
  5. ^ Maerz and Paul A Dictionary of Color New York:1930 McGraw-Hill Page 190; Color Sample of Auburn Page 37 Plate 7 Color Sample C11
  6. ^ The Wordsworth Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
  7. ^ Moffat, Alistair. "Celts' red hair could be attributed to the cloudy weather". Retrieved December 31, 2014.

External links

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