Where do green eyes come from?

reply to post by mateandbucky06


lol...men that i have dated tell me that they always feel im looking into their souls. i guess my gaze is intense.

I have green eyes and brown hair. I think my mom has green eyes too.
My dad and brother both have blue eyes. I guess I got my eye color from my moms side of the family, which is English/Irish. But I look a lot more like my dad who is from Hungary. Also When my brother was born he had bleach blonde hair till he was like 2 or 3 then it turned brown.

Originally posted by LostNemesis
Ya know, I think MOST red-heads have green eyes. Beyond that, I've wondered too. Seems me being the redhead, got green eyes.

While all the blondes in my family got Blue. Genetics is a funny thing.

Also, that it's extremely rare for a natural red-head to have anything BUT green eyes. What causes this?

both myself and my daughter are natural redheads, and while my eyes are an interesting mix of blue and green, hers are true beautiful blue. be careful when making sweeping statements. Ive also seen natural redheads with brown eyes.

my father has green eyes and black hair (but a red beard!). my sister has green eyes and brown hair. our heritage is celtic.

[edit on 10/6/08 by irishgrl]

Until I was nine, I had two blue eyes. Then one turned greenish and it's stayed that way. I used to use brown eyeshadow to try to disguise the eye-colour difference. I don't care about it now. Am used to it.

My children are twins. At birth they both had dark hair. My daughter's hair has remained dark but her eyes changed from sort of blue at birth, to hazel as a small child. In her late teens they started becoming more a true green, instead of the hazel. Now, she has clear green eyes, like pale green water. I think they're getting lighter as she gets older. She has porcelain skin. She had a full-length white hair when she was four years old.

My son's initial dark hair fell out. His next lot of hair was red, although the only proof now are his baby photos. Next, it became white blonde and remained that way almost to puberty. Now, his hair is a nice hazel-brown with occasional strands of blonde, black and white. He plays a lot of golf and the hair that isn't covered by his hat bleaches white blonde in the sun. His beard, when he hasn't shaved, is black, with strands of bright red. His eyes have remained true blue throughout. He has light to pink skin.

My children's father has hazel eyes and dark brown hair. In his immediate family are brown, green and blue eyed.

My parents were both blue eyed white blondes as children. Their eyes remained blue, but their hair became dark brown before adulthood.

reply to post by irishgrl


Yes, you've reminded me of a little girl who went to school with my children. She had rich, thick true-red hair and huge deep brown eyes. She was of Italian descent and was stunning .. unforgettable, obviously, as I still remember her after all these years.

My family is English, Irish and German but only my grandmother, 2nd cousin and myself have green eyes. All else has either brown or blue. My eyes have always been green and they are very very sensitive to light. When direct or filtered light hits them they get blurry and turn really green on the inside and yellow around the rim.
I think it's cool and my friends gets creeped out.

Well, i really can't get a decent picture....it's so annoying.

Here is a little preview until i can get my friend (who is a photographer) to take a better one.




[edit on 6/10/08 by blupblup]

reply to post by asmeone2


Ha Ha, I'm Hungarian. My mom has black hair & beautiful green eyes. Hers were lighter when she was younger. I got jipped, I inherited my dad's boring brown eyes.

Late to the thread, so surely someone has gone into the science of this... but for those of you who read the first few pages and last few and (like me) must have missed any intermediate explaination, I'll give the science behind it.

It has to do with genetics, the density of the melanin in your eyes, and (in many cases) the direction and quality of the light for those of us with hazel-green eyes.

Rather than retype the whole thing, here's a link to the Wikipedia article, which covers it pretty well: en.wikipedia.org...

A geneticist also answers it here (the short form of the answer is that more than one gene contributes to your eye color, so a mutation in one area can produce variants in eye color) : www.thetech.org...

As to eye color changing from envirionment or age, I found this quote from his answer particularly interesting:

Another way to get brown eyes from blue-eyed parents is for something in the environment to affect the eye color gene. Even though there are well-documented cases in which this happens, the reasons for it are pretty poorly understood.

There are cases, for example, of certain drugs changing a person’s eye color—the environment clearly has changed what happened to eye color in this case. Another possibility is that a gene is on or off for some reversible reason instead of an irreversible change in DNA. In this case, something in the environment reverses the change, turning the eye color gene back on or off.

Humans are pretty neat, eh? Come to think of it, all life forms are pretty neat.

Originally posted by mateandbucky06
I remember reading something many years ago (I don't remember exactly when so don't quote me on anything) that some gypsies were weary of people with blue eyes. I remember something about that some thought that people with blue eyes could look into your soul. I think it was some random spiritual website or something. Sorry I can't be more informative. But thought it might be randomly interesting.

cool. so! this means, since i havent seen any souls in anyone as of yet, there is not such thing as souls! Which also disproves god!

lol just kidding. however i still want to see whatever else that site said.

reply to post by Byrd


yes thats generally been stated befor.

reply to post by asmeone2

Several people I have spoken with say that their eyes were blue until they were about 10-12 years old and then they turn gray and then they turn green, very green, not hazel. So perhaps it is a mutation from blue eyes. I also read that medically this isn't possible, yet that was my experience, my mother's experience, my son's experience, my best friend's experience, and so forth. So the doctors don't know everything, do they?

Hi, I have heterochromia....in other words 2 different colored eyes....I have a grass green right eye and a $#@% brown left eye. I guess I am just half full of it. lol If anyone wants to see a pic u2u me and I'll hook you up.

reply to post by asmeone2


I dunno mine are a weird color of green.. my dad has the same color actually.. my only good feature LOL im not a read head either... so who knows?

Originally posted by Combatmed1
Hi, I have heterochromia....in other words 2 different colored eyes....I have a grass green right eye and a $#@% brown left eye. I guess I am just half full of it. lol If anyone wants to see a pic u2u me and I'll hook you up.

I messaged you!



Also, im conducting an experiment with the changing of eye color for myself atleast. just came back from a long while in 33c bright sunshine, right as i went inside i took a picture of my left eye. which looked like this (excuse the semi-bloodshot eyes, sun screen)



Tomorow morning (or later today if i deside to blindfold myself, ill take another shot of the same eye, to see if it did actually change in color. not to prove that an eye can change color, because we already know it can, simply seeing how drastic my change is because of UV rays

[edit on 6/10/08 by Ghost147]

On my fathers side of the family it's mostly blond hair and blue or brown eyes. On my mothers side it's usually brown hair with brown eyes except for my mothers sister, my aunt Katie. She has red hair with brown eyes. Her father, my grandfather, had red hair with brown eyes also. I started out with blond hair and blue eyes, then my hair turned dirty blond (dark but not brown) and my eyes change.. they'll be green one day and gray/silver the next and sometimes they turn a dark blue/green color. It's very strange and my family talks about it like it's an anomaly but I don't mind it really.

Where do green eyes come from? Ummm? Heaven? LOL! I really like green eyes. I'm quite envious (get it?) of people that have green eyes...all puns aside. I have poo brown eyes. Not interesting at all.

In the middle east, you find quite a few green-eyed people. My grandmother for example, is Iranian, has blonde hair and pale green eyes, all her 6 siblings are the same way too, as were both her parents.

She married a brown eyed/black haired man, and my father ended up with black hair and grass green eyes. My mother has brown hair and brown eyes, and my younger sister ended up with green/hazel eyes.

So, not to steer the topic...what is your take on amber eyes? Like a yellow-orange-gold color?

My eyes are that color, but I get lumped into the brown-eyed category...I believe amber eyes are as rare, if not rarer than green eyes, and probably violet eyes are the rarest (Albino's). I don't have a source for that, it is just something I heard. Anyone have any ideas about that?

I was born with flaming red hair and blue eyes but as I got older my eyes changed to hazel which is what I have now. My father had pure green eyes and my mom has deep blue eyes. My sister has blonde hair and dark blue eyes.

My eyes do change shades of green and brown, sometimes losing the colour of the other one completely, depending on my mood or what Im wearing.

I also must note that I am of European descent from Ireland- Father and Poland and German- Mother. Could this result in my hair and eye combination?

Originally posted by SciDoc


My eyes are that color, but I get lumped into the brown-eyed category...I believe amber eyes are as rare, if not rarer than green eyes, and probably violet eyes are the rarest (Albino's). I don't have a source for that, it is just something I heard. Anyone have any ideas about that?

Very pretty eyes you have.

I'd guess they are light brown? Otherwise maybe they are dark yellow? I don't know but I don't think I've every met anyone who actually has purple eyes. True albinos have pink eyes, btw.

[edit on 6-10-2008 by asmeone2]