Describing hair colour in Chinese

[Demonic_Duck]

It seems to me like there's some discrepency between how hair colours are described in Chinese and English. I was recently talking with a Chinese acquaintance about a mutual friend with what I would term "ginger hair", or alternatively "red hair". I first used the term 姜黄色 based on what I found on jukuu, to which she replied "no, not [other mutual friend who has blond hair]". I then said "no, not 黄发, 红发" and was understood. However, she also seemed to think that 黄发 covers what would often be termed "ginger" in English. A baidu image search confirmed this - most of the images were of asian women with dyed ginger hair, but the range also included blonde and what I'd call "mousy" (i.e. very light brown).

 

I carried out a few more baidu image searches, and this is what I found:

 

金发 - blond/blonde (mostly the latter, as it seems almost all results for any given colour of hair are pictures of women)

黄发 - as mentioned above, mostly ginger but also blond/blonde and mousy

红发 - mostly dyed red hair of an unnatural colour (i.e. what you'd call "red" when describing a rose, a 春节 papercut, a ferrari etc.) but with some that could conceivably be natural, albeit very bold natural red colours (difficult to tell as most pictures looked PS'd, but whatever)

橙色头发 - almost all dyed red hair, but of a conceivably natural colour, again towards the bold end of the spectrum of natural reds

姜黄色头发 - actually a very similar range to 黄发, but with more emphasis on what I'd call "ginger". Included a couple of pictures of "red hair day" events and a picture of Carrot Top.

黑发 - black hair (as expected)

棕色头发 - brown hair (as expected)

白发 - white hair (as expected)

灰发 - grey hair (as expected)

 

To be honest, if 姜黄色头发 can be applied to Carrot Top, I'm pretty sure my original usage was spot on. Anyway, anyone have any thoughts as to differences in perception of hair colour? I was actually most surprised that 黄发 could be applied to such a broad range, most of which isn't what's normally termed "blond(e)".

[Lu]

Compared to a standard of black hair, almost everything lighter than black is blond. And in a country where most people have never seen a red-haired person, except maybe on tv, there are probably not very clear standards on what kind of red is called what.

 

Anecdote: an aquaintance with what in the Netherlands is considered dark brown hair was in South America, where people remarked on her beautiful blond hair. A local lady was a bit insulted when the Dutch lady in turn remarked on her beautiful black hair: clearly it was light brown.

[Demonic_Duck]

Haha, love the anecdote. Guess it just goes to show that everything's relative. Actually, now I come to think of it, I'm pretty sure I've had my (fairly dark) brown hair described as 淡棕色 before.

[pprendeville]

This cropped up on a Popup Chinese podcast (In the Army) and they also said a anything not black is blonde.

[imron]

anything not black is blonde.

This has been my experience.

[imron]

Also, never heard 姜黄色 before.  It seems far too based on English for me to believe this is a commonly used term understood by most people.

[Demonic_Duck]

Fair point. I got that one from jukuu as the most common translation for "ginger hair". I guess it's probably one of those many colour terms that (at least in my cultural background) "manly men" aren't allowed to be familiar with lest they be judged too sissy by their peers.

[li3wei1]

I have trouble understanding what all the English terms for hair colour mean. mousy, strawberry blond, brunette, 'dirty blond', etc., and agreeing with other people about the border between black and very dark brown. I've pretty much given up, and just refer to people as 'dark-haired' and 'light-haired'. Don't get me started on paint colours.

[Demonic_Duck]

To my mind, the continuum from very fair to very dark:

 

Bleached blond(e) -> blond(e) -> dirty blond(e) -> mousy -> light brown -> brown -> dark brown -> black

 

The continuum from blond(e) to ginger:

 

Blond(e) -> strawberry blond(e) -> ginger/red

 

I guess some people would count "red" as brighter than "ginger", though I've always considered them interchangeable.

 

As for where those boundaries lie, I guess it's inevitably going to be subjective. It just seems that the placement of those imaginary boundaries differs substantially between the average Chinese speaker and the average English speaker (if you grant that the word "黑" is equal to "black", "棕" is equal to "brown", "黄" is equal to "yellow/blond(e)" etc.)

[skylee]

I don't understand the idea of red/ginger hair being interchangeable.  When I see the word ginger, the image of the food ginger comes up, and it has nothing remotely related to the idea of red.  Does anyone know why the word "ginger" is used to describe that colour?

 

I have just googled for photos with the keywords "red hair".  I would call many of the hair colours in the photos "golden" or "brown".  And then I googled for photos with the keywords "blond hair".  I noticed that the hair colour shown in the photos is quite pale and quite different from "red hair", but still I think a lot of the colours shown as "red hair" are quite far from "red".  

 

But I have met people with really red (i.e. the colour of shiny copper, orange-ish) hair, and that was ... quite surreal.

[Michaelyus]

About ginger coming to describe that bright copper-red hair: there's several theories. 

 

According to the OED, the association with colour dates back to 1552 at the latest (Huloet's Latin dictionary, where he glosses the Latin word melinus as "gynger coloure, after a whyte russet"). But the association of ginger with gingerbread, which is that orange-red colour, goes back a lot longer (1299 in the Durham Manuscripts: In ij Gurdis de Gingebrar). And of course preserved ginger, which is how Europe got its ginger, is also often reddish-orange.

 

I don't think much of the whole ginger flowers being red as a factor. But applying ginger to (people's) hair colour is relatively recent, with first attestations from the 19th century.

[skylee]

Preserved ginger, gingerbread and ginger flowers? Ok...