h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This is not a joke; there is no incredibly funny punchline, I really want to know.

When talking about a woman's hair colour she can be blonde (note the 'e' at the end), brunette or red-head. There are different shades of blonde or red, but those are the main colour categories.

When talking about a man's hair colour he can be blond (note, no 'e') or red-head, but I can't think of a word to describe a dark-haired man. HELP!

What kind of word would you like? There's a choice

1) Dark-haired. Prosaic, but says it all, really.
2) I've always used brunette to refer to men and none have ever complained.
3)If you want one with the same root as "brunette" but more masculine-sounding, the French word would be "brun" (pronounced down your nose in a French style-ee.)
4)

Errr, there was no number 4. Sorry.

I've always thought of brunette as a feminine word (i.e., applying to females rather than males), partly because I am a brunette. Therefore I am reluctant to use it to describe a dark-haired man. I did consider 'brun', as it is French for brown (even though brunettes can have black hair!), but it doesn't sound right. And as for 'dark-haired', O.K, so it's the obvious way, but why should women have a single word to describe their hair colour while men have to use a hyphenated one? Ah well, I suppose I'll have to stick with option 1!

I am tall, dark and handsome myself.

My mother always told me that self-praise is no recommendation.

Besides, I'm married and therefore not interested.

I find if easy and convenient to say the colour of the person's hair in question, ie
"He's got brown hair", or "He's got black hair". Simple, easy, efficient. But very boring. I find the wonderful variety of phrases employed to denigrate ginger-haired people to be much more interesting and inventive, myself, but I suppose that's a different subject really, isn't it?

A more interesting and less asked question would be why there are so many denigrating terms for red-heads? What have we done to deserve it?

What I was looking for is really a generic term for dark-haired men, in the way that 'brunette' is a generic term for dark-haired women. When referring to an individual, of course using their actual hair colour is easier.

I guess that my problem here is that I'm not a red-head myself, and I haven't known that many (only 2 spring to mind from my long list of friends/acquaintances/colleagues over the years). The only denigrating term I can think of for a red-head (which I have never used, BTW) is 'carrot-top'. My husband has used this word to describe his hair colour when he was born. His hair gradually changed to brown, but his beard has strong hints of red in it.

I should imagine the reason we have nouns that distinguish between blonde and dark haired women is that we still judge women on their appearance more than we do men. Hair colour is an easy and basic distintion to make, and allows us to divide women into separate groups - the blonde and the brunette (and the red-head), each with their own characteristics. It's interesting that the practice of dyeing one's hair does not break down this distinction, but reinforces it. A brunette who dyes her hair blonde becomes a blonde, albeit a 'bottle' blonde.

Despite the best efforts of cosmetics companies, our judgements of men have not yet become entirely superficial, so there has been no need for such a distinction to arise between blond and dark haired men. Yet.

Dark-haired woman = Brunette
Dark-haired man = Bruno

Obvious, really.

B