Blue eyes, brown hair heritage ? ?

Question

You know how, stereotypically, heritages come with certain traits? For example, scottish people have red hair and freckles, Dutch people have blonde hair, etc etc.

People always tell me I must have a significant pure-blooded heritage aswell. They usually say Italian or Irish. People say this because my whole family - brothers, parents, aunts and uncles, cousins etc - all have bright blue eyes and brown hair and freckles.

Is this true? If so, what would my heritage be if all my family share that trait?

Answer 1

No, it is not impossible for you to have blue eyes if both of your parents are blue eyed.  Now, what is possible, but not too common is for two blue eyed persons to have a brown eyed child.  There is a fallacy that they cannot.  However, from two PHD's in genetics, it is possible for blue eyed person to carry weak recessive brown eyed gene and when yo combined the weak recessive brown eyed gene from both parents they can produce that trait.

Brown eyes are normally dominant.  If a person has blue eyes and they have a brown eyed parent it is because the brown eyed gene they have is very weak.

Answer 2

What you are asking about really is a matter of phenotype versus genotype. Genotype is your full genetic makeup, phenotype is how you appear. You can find more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenotype

For your blue eyes question, here is a little information from: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200...

The laws of genetics state that eye color is inherited as follows:

If both parents have blue eyes, the children will have blue eyes.

The brown eye form of the eye color gene (or allele) is dominant, whereas the blue eye allele is recessive.

If both parents have brown eyes yet carry the allele for blue eyes,  a quarter of the children will have blue eyes, and three quarters will have brown eyes.

It then follows that if a child born to two blue-eyed parents does not have blue eyes, then the blue-eyed father is not the biological father. It is therefore reasonable to expect that a man would be more attracted towards a woman displaying a trait that increases his paternal confidence, and the likelihood that he could uncover his partner’s sexual infidelity. (Full article at the above link.)

Answer 3

I, too have brown hair and blue eyes.  They call it "black irish"  it is from when the Spanish invaded Ireland.  

The blue eyed gene is submissive, so in order for someone to have blue eyes they must have 2 blue eye genes.  One from each parent.

If you have one of each you will have brown or hazel eyes but never blue.

If the Spanish brown eye mixed with the Irish blue eye then the children would have one of each.  This would create many with brown or hazel eyes that still had the blue eyed gene.  

If they continued to mix with the blue eyed Irish once the Spaniards had left, then you would regain the blue eyes but keep the brown hair.

I think you miss understood me.  If both of your parents have blue eyes then you WILL have blue eyes.  It is impossible to have blue eyes if you have one blue eye gene and one brown eye gene.  (Light hazel which looks almost blue, hazel,green, light or dark brown) but not true blue.  

Even someone with brown eyes can have one blue eye gene to pass on to their child.

We each have two genes that determine our eye color, one from each parent.

Brown or hazel eyed parents with one of each gene could each pass on their blue eyed gene and have a blue eyed child.

If both parent have ONLY brown eyed genes then they will not have a blue eyed child.

Answer 4

My friend and his grandparents have blue eyes and dark brown hair.They are Macedonian.

Answer 5

Your eye color comes from inherited genetics.

All the rest of the question concerning physical things (hair or eye color) have nothing to do with any one nationality.  You were right when you use the word "stereotypically".  If all the family has blue eyes, it means that numerous ancestors with blue eyes, married each other.  They might have been peasants or nobility.. you have to research who they were, to come to any valid conclusions.

Answer 6

You could have ancestry from any one of many European countries.

  Two people with brown eyes can indeed produce blue eyed children-IF they both carry the recessive gene for blue eyes. (Brown is normally dominant.) it's rare but not  that rare-about 1 in 10,000 I believe (my cousin is one-both parents brown eyed but 2 grandparents blue eyed)

  It is still widely thought that 2 blue eyed people can't produce brown eyed kids as they both have recessive blue eye genes but even that's not quite the case. More complicated but apparently the genes can mutate and double up, so if the people have brown eyes somewhere in their background they can indeed produce brown eyed kids.

back to ancestry-italians are usuallyvery dark in  the south but can even be blond in the north where celtic tribes lived long ago. The Irish can be very varied, from dark hair and dark eyes to red hair and freckles. The black irish look actually does NOT come from modern Spaniards 9Armada) who only ever came to ireland in minimal amounts (a few ship wreck survivors , many of them killed by scared locals) but  from ancient peoples who came into Ireland from the basque area of Spain and the near east between 5 & 8000 years ago.