It is a common misconception that Italians must look a particular way. The stereotype is that Italians have dark hair, dark eyes, and olive skin. Nevertheless, hair and eye color vary in Italy and so does skin tone. It is not uncommon to see Italians with lighter eye and hair shades. Italians have all different eye colors including brown, hazel, green, and blue. There are blonde, brunette, and red-haired Italians. The more North you move in Italy the more frequently you will see Italians with blue eyes. The map below illustrates this trend.
The following map shows the percent of Italian who have blonde hair. As with eye color, the more North you go the more common blonde hair becomes.
The reason that Italians in the north are lighter than those in the south is partially based on the fact that there is more of a Germanic influence in Northern Italy and more of an Arabic influence in Southern Italy. Furthermore, there is a difference in the climate which definitely can have an effect on skin tone.
Looking at famous Italians, we are able to see the various different hair and eye colors. The iconic Italian beauty Sophia Loren, who was born in the central part of Italy has green eyes and medium brown hair. Frank Sinatra‘s mother was from Nothern Italy and his father was from Sicily. He is the perfect example of an Italian with bright blue eyes!
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Nice article, having learned a lot here about dressing tips.
Typical ignorance. There is no genetic evidence to support the claim of Germanic genetic contribution in northern Italy, nor Arabic genetics in the south. And there is even less scientific evidence to support the claim that blondism or skin tone in Italy owe their frequency to the influence of Germans or Arabs.
There’s more evidence of Teutonic influence on generally the whole of the Italian peninsula, than there is to Arabic. In ancient times, there were no Arabs or Turkic people anywhere around there, but there were of course, Greeks, Etruscans, and in smaller measure Phoenicians, who impacted much of Italy. Lets face it, people are prejudiced in favor of simply the way that they look as individuals as “the standard.” There were as many as a half-million Langobards who invaded Italy, and they never left like the Goths did. So for the most part, on top of the very ancient Proto-Europeans, most of the north were Romanized Gauls, most of the central were Romanized Etruscans (or Umbrians), and most of the south were Romanized Greeks… to oversimplify it a little bit.
One could just keep stirring the pot. Well over two thousand years ago, many Etruscan settlers were pushed deep into the central Alps by the Gauls, and they merged with local mountain tribes, forming a nation of sorts… Rhaetia, a federation of tribes who adopted the Etruscan language and customs for the most part. This was mostly in Switzerland, or perhaps even the Austrian Alps. So race forward to the present day, and there are Germans who simply don’t look German, such as the German-Canadian actress Ingrid Haas. She looks basically Italian, and not because of some darker hair or eyes, but her features are very possibly a throwback to the Rhaetians. She easily could be a Tuscan, but she’s German. Giorgia Meloni is half Sardianian/half Sicilian, but could easily look perhaps French. We could spend all day going around and around with this.