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

than anywhere else?

if so: why?

Probably not than anywhere else. Ireland really do have a lot of redheads.

if so: why?

we dont sacrafice G-inng-ers to our gods

isn't that an epithet?

seriously, it seems to my casual observation that there are more ginger haired people in the british isles than elsewhere. obviously moreso than china, but in comparison to north and western europe.

is it because blonde haired norse interbred with red headed celts with a frequency not seen elsewhere?

by ginger i mean proper ginger, not true red heads. a lot of these folks are slipping thru as blondes and light brown haired people.

and for no other reason than idle curiosity, is there an objective colour index that says when someone in one colour hair or another?

passports and drivers' licences seem to take it as a matter of trust on the part of the applicant.

strawberry blonde and auburn are colours invented by gingers to get away from the fact that they are ginger

auburn is 180 from ginger. it is brown with some red in it. john lennon had auburn hair. so did jfk. hardly ginger.

ginger is blonde hair with some red in it. quite distinct imho from red hair. why anyone would lump them together strikes me as not making any sense.

i knew a chap in the army who was as ginger as ginger could be yet he insisted his hair colour was auburn

it surprises you someone would want to avoid, however improbably, the nonsense that goes with being a red head or ginger?

i suspect you have failed to identify the origin of the problem.

*clue...it isn't his hair colour*

Red hair was a pictish thing, not celtic, although the other 'celtic' tribes that intermingled with the picts pict it up from there.

red hair is described among the celts by the romans. boadicea was a red head. the very early picts we know pretty much nothing about. in the broader sense they are celts anyway.

if you look at the pic on the front page today for the 'class photo' entry, you will see that of 16 children, 3 have red hair and another 6 have various hues of ginger or strawberry blonde hair.

i doubt one would find this sort of ratio anywhere outside the british isles.

Well, true enough that picts could be considered celts, although 'celtic' in that sense just means any of the tribes in the british isles. My language was sloppy there, I was trying to distinguish between picts and scots. It was the picts that Tacitus described as red haired and large limbed. well, the caledonians I think he actually termed them.

I was just trying to distinguish scots and picts as many people think of scots/welsh/irish as celts in some sort of general culture and picts as earlier and seperate, whereas celt is pretty much a meaningless term to refer to the disparate tribes in these isles at that time.

Scots, by t'way, referring to that particular tribe and not the inhabitants of what we now know as scotland.

"celt is pretty much a meaningless term to refer to the disparate tribes in these isles at that time."

Try a meaningless term to describe the non-Roman, non-Germanic tribes of North-Western Europe.

I agree though, the whole Celtic nation thing is dross.

good point. my but I'm being being sloppy in my definitions today! Time for work, where such sloppiness is easily hidden by business speak and wordiness which no one reads anyway

I too thought of Irish people having a high percentage of people with ginger hair.
Sacrifising people with Ginger hair was mentioned too, although that is going a bit too far but if there has to be just one sacrifice could it be that annoying chap with glasses who I believe was married to/is married to Billie Piper. Can't remember his name but would glad to pull the lever on him.
However that surgeon on Holby City can be saved, again can't remember her name, but she plays the really nasty manipulative surgeon. She can be saved as a quite stunning looking woman really.

well whats the problem being ginger look at the slagging blondes get and still girls want to be one bottle blonde etc .

It think it is Chris Evans I am thinking about but not sure.
There is nothing wrong with being ginger, Chris Evans is annoying due to him being an annoying twat, not the colour of his hair.

Blimey, Strangely, how did you get that past the censors?

Yes there is a "colour chart" for hair. I checked at the hairdresser's when I had last year's annual cut, so that I could go home and inform my family that Officially, My Hair Is Not Black.

I thought the Vikings brought the red hair here with them .

Mol

The ginger thing really upsets me.I've seen cases of redheads with really beautiful copper coloured hair dying their hair black because of the constant gibes.I actually think it is the most attractive of all the hair colours.

I say to all the red haired folk of the world to ignore the ignorant and stupid among us and please be proud to be 'ginger'.

I'd love to have had red hair rather than the disgusting mousy brown I achieved after my baby blond locks turned darker.

I'd just like to have hair again

If it´s vikings I would have expected Scandinavia to have much higher incidence of red hair that it does. Lots of blonde people, but not many redheads. I heard something once that the romans used to kill redheads, due to some superstition.