What is the most common hair color among Irish people? (2024)

FAQs

What is the most common hair color in Ireland? ›

What color hair do Irish people usually have? Dark hair - dark brown towards black. Lighter shades of brown are relatively common too. Natural blonde hair is found here, but it's quite rare.

The highest concentration of people with green eyes is found in Ireland, Scotland, and northern Europe. In fact, in Ireland and Scotland, more than three-fourths of the population has blue or green eyes – 86 percent! Many factors go into having green eyes.

The reason is simply that it is the northernmost branch (red hair being more useful at higher latitudes) and that the Celtic populations of Britain and Ireland have retained the purest Proto-Celtic ancestry (extremely high percentage of R1b).

The percentage of redheads in Ireland hovers around the 10% mark. Scotland weighs in at around 6%, followed by England at around 4%. Scottish people may disagree, but we say Ireland is the undisputed world capital of redheads.

Natural red hair is the rarest hair color in the world. A mere one to two percent of people are born with auburn hair. The prevalence is slightly higher in the northern and western fringes of Europe, especially the British Isles (mainly Ireland and Scotland), than in the rest of the world.

Around 90% of Scots have Brown hair and about 3% each of Red, Black and Fair.

What is their Irishness? Among these faces: Map of Ireland: big chin, thin upper lip, nose of topographical complexity and hooded eyes whose lids seem to cross the pupils on a slow diagonal -- features almost too big for the face, heavy and quaint like a 1954 Buick Roadmaster.

Modern Irish are the population most genetically similar to the Bronze Age remains, followed by Scottish and Welsh, and share more DNA with the three Bronze Age men from Rathlin Island than with the earlier Ballynahatty Neolithic woman.

According to The University of Melbourne, red hair and blue eyes is the most uncommon pairing. The traits for both red hair and blue eyes are recessive, so the chances of these two coming together are very rare. Only 1-2% of the population has red hair and only 17% has blue eyes.

Ireland has the highest number of red-haired people per capita in the world, with the percentage of those with red hair at around 10%. Great Britain also has a high percentage of people with red hair.

Do redheads have a higher pain tolerance? ›

Prior research has already put red-haired humans and mice into the spotlight, pointing out that they have a higher pain threshold. They also don't need as high of a dosage of pain-killing opioids, and they tend to require more anesthesia compared to people with non-red hair.

4. While red hair is synonymous with Ireland, it didn't even originate there. Red hair can actually be traced back to Central Asia. So whether you're a redhead with Irish roots or not, your genes probably originated from the same place.

Edinburgh boasts the highest concentration of red-haired gene carriers out of the entire world, making it the redhead capital of the globe. Although red hair is frequently associated with Scotland, Ireland, and England, people of color can also be born with natural red hair.

The recessive gene that carries red hair has been traced back 50,000 Years when early modern gingers first appeared in the grasslands of Central Asia.

Red hair runs in families, but non-redhead parents can also have a red haired child. So how exactly does genetics influence hair color? MC1R is a recessive gene. This means that two copies (one inherited from each parent) are required for the trait to be observed.

This is why it became customary to wear green clothes, accessories and shamrocks in celebrating St. Patrick's Day. So even with all this green iconography, blue is the favourite colour of the Emerald Isle!

Here's our answer in figures: over 10% of the Irish population is indeed redheaded, auburn or Venetian blond in Ireland. This figure is still behind that of Scotland, which has 13% redheads on board. An estimated 46% of the Irish population carry the recessive freckle gene.

Almost half (48%) of Brits are natural brunettes, around three in ten (29%) are natural blondes and 8% have natural black strands.