Where do the English get blonde hair and blue eyes from?

Question

A fairly random question perhaps! I was having a chat with a friend and we could not come to an agreement about where English people get blonde hair and blue eyes from? Was it the Romans? Scandinavians? Or another culture entirely? We originally thought the Romans... but then we began to question this as Mediterranean people particularly italians are famed for having dark hair, dark eyes and olive skin!

Anyone shed any light on this?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Well, first of all, many many English people don't have blonde hair or blue eyes!

OK: a bit of information about the history of Britain. When the Romans arrived in Britain, they found many tribes of people speaking a Celtic language: throughout what are now Wales, England and Southern Scotland, this was Brythonic -- the ancestor of Welsh, Cornish and Breton. In other parts of Scotland, there were also speakers of Pictish, a language that may or may not have been Celtic. Gaelic made it into Scotland from Ireland by AD 400.

Now, the Romans themselves were Mediterranean, but many of their soldiers were from conquered territories, often mercenaries -- so many of them were drawn from Germanic tribes.

That's the first obvious source: Germanic soldiers in the Roman army. Then, when the Romans left, Germanic settlement and invasion increased enormously, as Angles, Saxons and Jutes crossed from mainland Europe. They brought English to Britain, and Brythonic came ultimately to be restricted to Wales and Cornwall. Again: these immigrants probably brought quite a bit of blondness with them. Then, of course, over the next few centuries, the Vikings, with their blond and red hair, came in reasonably high numbers.

So: that's the orthodox view. The blond hair and blue eyes were brought to Eastern Britain by Germanic people, first in the Roman army, then in Germanic invasions, then in Viking invasions. And certainly the typical Welshman -- the descendant of the native Briton according to this view -- is still considered to be dark.

But there are problems: the natives in what is now England weren't all killed or displaced (and maybe not all that much at all): there should be vast amounts of "native blood" still in England. Second, we don't know much at all about the ethnic
makeup of Britain before the Romans: just that by that time their language was Celtic -- but language doesn't say all that much about ethnicity (look how many Indians speak English). And we certainly know from place-name evidence that there were non-Celtic languages about in Britain, though possibly extinct by the Roman period. Third, Caesar said at the time that natives in the West of Britain were dark, while those in the East were blonder (though there may have been some hair bleaching). Some speculate that there may already have been Germanic settlements before the Romans.

So: where does that leave us? Basically, part of English blondness is due to Germanic settlement during and after the Roman period, but much of it is probably older, and its source very uncertain.

Answer 2

Celtic and Germanic people can have blonde hair and blue eyes. These people settled in England.Blue eyes are the most common eye color and a third are blonde, but the majority are brown-haired.
Blue eyes frequencies in England varies from region to region.
Central England - 50%
Yorkshire - 49%
Northeast England - 47%
Southeast England - 44%
East England - 41%
Southwest England - 35%

In comparison to some European populations:
Denmark - 50.7%
Belgium - 28.9%
Switzerland - 28%
France - 20.6%
Spain - 11.7%

Answer 3

The English have the Vikings to thank. After the raiding and pillaging was done, the Vikings were good at 'socializing' with the locals.

In general, the Scandinavians and Northern Europeans tend to carry the blue-eyed blonde genes. We don't mind 'sharing' though.

Answer 4

Scandinavians

Answer 5

Yes I knew this one guy in High School that was Turkish and he liked me but he felt as if his family would say that he is ruing the race. The people in Turkey are very brainwashed and they seem you features as superior. Another important thing is that they are not white over there, they are just Caucasian due to their European blood. They love you because of your features, not who you are.

Answer 6

The Vikings.

Answer 7

they buy it from sweden ?

Answer 8

fromt he arian race, from Hitler