"Red Hair" is clearly Orange

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Seriously, what is with people?

Am I just color blind or is what is generally known as "red hair" blatantly Orange?

I lived the first decade or so of my life perplexed by this colloquialism - but It still irks me when I see a blatant ginger called "red head". It's ORANGE? Get the Dulux Color chart out if you don't believe me.

Explain please.

/Agree

It always annoys me when people can't seen to understand the fact that my hair is orange.

There was another thread on this a year or two ago. Everyone agreed that it's orange hair.

It's just one of those petty unresolved conflicts from my childhood that always pissed me off. Why call it red?

People dye their hair actually red nowadays, and they say "oh I've dyed my hair red now" but the copper head ginger next to them is still a "red head". By the way, I don't have red hair, my hair is black. The matter just popped up in my mind.

I would tend to call it auburn.

A few times I've let my beard grow out I've had red-ish or auburn hair in it.

Some people have a distinct reddish tinge to their hair, like a friend of mine whose hair is naturally close to a dark brownish red. There are also people who have hair that's simply red-orange, to the point that it's not difficult to see why one would be inclined to say "red hair." Also, "red hair" sounds much more dramatic and cool than "orange hair."

Something far more perplexing to me is "black" people. They are clearly brown. Black people who are very dark skinned don't form the majority of black people - to me, it's fairly obvious that they are varying shades of brown. And "white" people? The color is more like peach in my eyes. I guess if you want a racialized dichotomy of good vs bad, "white and black" works. But I still find it inaccurate. Still, the distinction has stuck, and a lot of black people are totally okay with being called black. I'm not one to take away people's identification.

YOU LIE! YOU LIE!! !

I also agree about red hair being orange. If people actually had red hair, they'd be walking around looking like Ronald McDonald.

Thank you!! !

I got browbeaten into acquiescing that orange hair was "red" by my kindergarten teachers when I was 5 and colored someone's hair realistically in a coloring book.

Minus the clown outfit though.

I thought it was just me, everybody kept on correcting me.

Goes with his face being painted white though since people with red hair are as "white" as they come. I always thought of red haired people as super-white for some reason. lol

yes i agree, and this annoys me too:
1) people with tan skin are called white people and people with brown skin are called black people
2) when people say the sun is yellow in the afternoon when it's really white or when people turn on a lamp the light is yellow, there are actually yellow light bulbs that produce yellow light
3) when people say water is blue when it's really clear or a murky brown or dark green

Naturally occurring redheads, or gingers, can have any and all of a range of hair colours. Younger people (from childhood to late twenties) can have vibrant and very orange hair. It is common for these people to darken, or go blond in their older age. Then there are the more common auburns and bronzes. These range from reddish browns to strawberry-blonds. The only people who have chromatically red hair are those who dye their hair 'cherry' red or the like.

In the U.K., the term 'ginger' can be somewhat derogatory, possibly stemming to the history with the Celts. The term redhead, though, could be like an ancient Greek description, who often named colours by their vibrance (the sky was described as bronze, or shiny). I believe the term itself was first used in the 1500s when gingers were still associated with the devil.

As a side, nobody in my family is ginger, and most of us have a range of pale or dark browns, but I, like many, have strong ginger hairs in my beard. I like the way it looks.

I too have this "red" in my beard.

It should be noted, though, that the word 'orange' itself is a relatively new addition to the English language, as both the fruit and the word were introduced to the Germanic and Celtic cultural spheres of the British Isles (and Northwest Continental Europe) -where redheads are the most abundant- fairly late. Anything that had an orange colour before those days, was identified as bright red if the shade of orange was darker, and dark yellow if the shade of orange was lighter. There are many other languages that do not differentiate between red and orange, as exemplified by the many instances in which variations of the word 'orange' serve as the loanword denominator for the colour, without there being a native equivalent of the word.

Similarly, in the common vernacular, we do not differentiate between 'blue' and 'indigo', even though indigo, like orange, is one of the seven colours in the visible light spectrum. It just never entered common speech, and as a result, shades of indigo are referred to as dark blue and deep purple (or 'deep violet' if you will).

So if "Red hair" is clearly orange then what is "orange hair"?