How to refer to a character who has black hair?

**Salsa** · May 21st, 2013, 07:34 PM

I may have taken an extended break from writing ANYTHING and came back and decided that my main pov character who has blonde hair, should instead have black hair. I know, super pointless change and what not, but another pov character has been referring to her quite often as "the royal blonde" when thinking about her.

So... what do people who have black hair get nicknamed?

Does this sound stupid? "the royal raven"

**tmso** · May 21st, 2013, 10:42 PM

That's actually an interesting conundrum...I think.

The thing is, before the modern wonders of good, cheap hair dyes, blondes were generally uncommon. Uncommon enough than referring to someone as the 'royal blonde' would be a unique enough description to indicate who was being referred to. But that's not your problem, right?

If not, I guess royal raven would be okay. (shrugs)

**zachariah** · May 22nd, 2013, 05:12 AM

If it's set in modern times, 'the royal jet' might work...Bit laboured though. For ye olde fantasy worlde, they would be familiar with oil, coal, obsidian...Plus a few from here! There's also blackbird, moleskin.

If it were me though, I'd find some other way to refer to her.

**Sam James** · May 22nd, 2013, 08:59 AM

If the nickname is meant to mock the main character lightheartedly, I think "The Royal Raven" has a nice ring to it. Hopefully she would be in some sort of leadership position to justify the "royal" part of it. (Or maybe if she just had a princess-complex).

**StephenPorter** · May 22nd, 2013, 03:58 PM

Oddly enough, I have been wondering about this myself recently. In any case, my dictionary (yes a big fat one made out of this thing called paper) defines "brunet" as having dark brown OR BLACK hair or eyes. But that's the second definition and it isn't listed for the very similar word "brunette" Of course then you get into the whole can of worms regarding the distinction between brunet and brunette, as well as the older use of the term which meant general complexion, not just hair color.

Or you can try Wikipedia for advice (I swear, they have an article for everything)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hair