Hazel eyes are a mix of brown and green. Different factors can cause these colors to be more prominent, but your genes determine them. Hazel eyes are rare, occurring in about 5% of the world's population.
A blue and a green-eyed parent will have all hazel-eyed kids. This is one of the reasons I like the modifier gene explanation so much. It can help explain how green and blue-eyed parents might have hazel-eyed kids.
There are two main types of hazel eyes: those with brown as the dominant color in the iris and those with green as the dominant color.
More information about Hazel Eyes
Anyone can be born with hazel eyes, but it's most common in people of Brazilian, Middle Eastern, North African, or Spanish descent. When eyes are hazel, they are brown mixed with amber and green. In some cases, there are shades of gray, blue, and gold within the iris too.
We learn that brown eye color is dominant, while blue eyes are recessive. By this logic, two blue-eyed parents couldn't have a child with light brown eyes, much less a child with hazel or even the more mysterious grey eyes.
Two hazel-eyed parents are likely to have a hazel-eyed child, although a different eye color could emerge. If one of the grandparents has blue eyes, the odds of having a baby with blue eyes increases slightly.
Your children inherit their eye colors from you and your partner. It's a combination of mom and dad's eye colors – generally, the color is determined by this mix and whether the genes are dominant or recessive. Every child carries two copies of every gene – one comes from mom, and the other comes from dad.
Only about 5 percent of the population worldwide has the hazel eye genetic mutation. After brown eyes, they have the most melanin. . The combination of having less melanin (as with green eyes) and a lot of melanin (like brown eyes) make this eye color unique.
Of those four, green is the rarest. It shows up in about 9% of Americans but only 2% of the world's population. Hazel/amber is the next rarest of these. Blue is the second most common and brown tops the list with 45% of the U.S. population and possibly almost 80% worldwide.
To much surprise, it's not just babies' eyes that change color. Adults can, too. About 10-15 percent of Caucasian people (mostly those with light eyes) have eyes that change color in later life. Light brown eyes can get lighter and look hazel, whereas hazel eyes can get darker.
Much like gray eyes, hazel eyes may appear to “change color” from green to light brown to gold. Individuals whose eyes appear to be one color closest to the pupil, another color a little farther our, and another color around the edge of the iris are likely to have hazel eyes.
What about hazel eyes? Hazel eyes are hard to predict because it's typically a mixture of brown, green and amber shades. If both the parents have hazel eyes, there are 99% chances that the baby will also have hazel eyes. If both the parents have brown eyes, there is a 75% chance that their child will have brown eyes.
Hazel eyes are more common in North Africa, the Middle East, and Brazil, as well as in people of Spanish heritage.
In the first few years of life, more melanin may accumulate in the iris, causing blue eyes to turn green, hazel or brown. Babies whose eyes turn from blue to brown develop significant amounts of melanin. Those who end up with green eyes or hazel eyes develop a little less.
What brings out the green in hazel eyes? Red is complementary to green. So, eyeshadow shades that are reddish in color, or that have reddish undertones, will make the green hues in hazel colored-eyes pop.
We found that green is the most popular lens colour, with brown coming in a close second, despite it being one of the most common eye colours. Although blue and hazel are seen as the most attractive eye colours for men and women they are surprisingly the least popular.
Green eyes tend to have a mostly solid green color throughout the iris (the colored part of the eye). Hazel eyes, on the other hand, are multicolored. For instance, if you have green eyes with brown or gold flecks or a gradient of green, brown, and gold, then you have hazel eyes.
Hazel Eyes
Some say they're “hazelnut” and others call them “golden” or even “brownish green.” As with blue and green eyes, hazel eyes may appear to shift colors depending on the lighting, and even mood! People with hazel eyes are thought to be kind-hearted, curious and spontaneous.
Green is considered by some to be the actual rarest eye color in the world, though others would say it's been dethroned by red, violet, and grey eyes.
The term hazel comes from the color of a hazelnut and is recorded describing eyes as early as the 1690s. Opinions vary on what, exactly, constitutes hazel eyes. Some consider them to be any shade with light brown or gold tones; others think they are variation of brown eyes, only with more green or gold in the iris.
What is the rarest eye color? Green is the rarest eye color in the world, with only 2% of the world's population (and fewer than one out of ten Americans) sporting green peepers, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO).
Unlike nuclear DNA, which comes from both parents, mitochondrial DNA comes only from the mother.
All men inherit a Y chromosome from their father, which means all traits that are only found on the Y chromosome come from dad, not mom. The Supporting Evidence: Y-linked traits follow a clear paternal lineage.
Some seemingly impossible genetics can and do happen sometimes. This means that your kids might get your grandparent's darker eyes or hair even if you have kids with someone with blonde hair and blue eyes. It just would be much less likely than blonde haired, blue eyed kids.
Hazel eyes are most common in North Africa, the Middle East, Brazil, and Spain.