Aquiline nose

"Roman nose" redirects here. For the Cheyenne warrior, see Roman Nose.

An aquiline nose (also called a Roman nose) is a human nose with a prominent bridge, giving it the appearance of being curved or slightly bent. The word aquiline comes from the Latin word aquilinus ("eagle-like"), an allusion to the curved beak of an eagle.^[2][3][4] While some have ascribed the aquiline nose to specific ethnic, racial, or geographic groups, and in some cases associated it with other supposed non-physical characteristics (i.e. intelligence, status, personality, etc., see below), no scientific studies or evidence support any such linkage. As with many phenotypical expressions (e.g. 'widow's peak', eye color, earwax type) it is found in many geographically diverse populations.

An "aquiline" nasal profile

From parody nose classification Notes on Noses: "It indicates great decision, considerable Energy, Firmness, Absence of Refinement, and disregard for the bienseances of life".^[1]

In racist discourse

In racist discourse, especially that of post-Enlightenment Western writers, a Roman nose has been characterized as a marker of beauty and nobility.^[5] A well-known example of the aquiline nose as a marker contrasting the bearer with their contemporaries is the protagonist of Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (1688). Although an African prince, he speaks French, has straightened hair, thin lips, and a "nose that was rising and Roman instead of African and flat".^[6] These features set him apart from most of his peers, and marked him instead as noble and on par with Europeans.^[7][8][9]

In the context of scientific racism, writers have attributed aquiline noses as a characteristic of different "races"; e.g.: according to Jan Czekanowski, it is most frequently found amongst members of the Arabid race and Armenoid race. It was also often seen as a characteristic of the Mediterranean race and Dinarid race.^[10] In 1899, William Z. Ripley argued that it is characteristic of peoples of Teutonic descent.^[11] The supposed science of physiognomy, popular during the Victorian era, made the "prominent" nose a marker of Aryanness: "the shape of the nose and the cheeks indicated, like the forehead's angle, the subject's social status and level of intelligence. A Roman nose was superior to a snub nose in its suggestion of firmness and power, and heavy jaws revealed a latent sensuality and coarseness".^[12]

See also

• Rhinoplasty § Nasal analysis
• Anatomy of the human nose
• Jewish nose

References

1. Jabet, George (1852). Notes on Noses. Richard Bentley. p. 9.
2. Eliza Cook (1851). Eliza Cook's Journal. J. O. Clark. p. 381.
3. John C. Fredriksen (1 January 2001). America's Military Adversaries: From Colonial Times to the Present. ABC-CLIO. p. 432. ISBN 978-1-57607-603-3. He matured into a powerfully built man, tall, muscular, with an aquiline profile that gave rise to the name Woquni, or "Hook Nose." The whites translated this into the more familiar moniker of Roman Nose. In his early youth, Roman Nose ...
4. Henry Neuman; Giuseppe Marco Antonio Baretti (1827). Neuman and Baretti's Dictionary of the Spanish and English Languages: Spanish and English. Hilliard, Gray, Little, and Wilkins. p. 65. Aquiline, resembling an eagle; when applied to the nose, hooked.
5. Adams, Mikaëla M. (2009). "Savage Foes, Noble Warriors, and Frail Remnants: Florida Seminoles in the White Imagination, 1865-1934". The Florida Historical Quarterly. 87 (3): 404–35. JSTOR 20700234.
6. Behn, Aphra (1987). Adelaide P. Amore (ed.). Oroonoko, Or, The Royal Slave: A Critical Edition. UP of America. p. 10. ISBN 9780819165299.
7. Gates, Henry Louis (1998). "Introduction". In Henry Louis Gates; William L. Andrews (eds.). Pioneers of the Black Atlantic: Five Slave Narratives from the Enlightenment, 1772-1815. Civitas. pp. 1–30. ISBN 9781887178983.
8. Popkin, Richard Henry (1988). Millenarianism and Messianism in English Literature and Thought, 1650-1800: Clark Library Lectures, 1981-1982. Brill. p. 206. ISBN 9789004085138.
9. Bohls, Elizabeth (2013). Romantic Literature and Postcolonial Studies. Oxford UP. p. 52. ISBN 9780748678754.
10. Czekanowski, Jan (1934). Człowiek w Czasie i Przestrzeni (eng. A Human in Time and Space) - The lexicon of biological anthropology. Kraków, Poland: Trzaska, Ewert i Michalski - Bibljoteka Wiedzy.
11. Winlow, Heather (2006). "Mapping Moral Geographies: W. Z. Ripley's Races of Europe and the United States". Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 96 (1): 119–41. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8306.2006.00502.x. JSTOR 3694148. S2CID 145454002.
12. Cowling, Mary (1989). The Artist as Anthropologist: The Representation of Type and Character in Victorian Art. Cambridge. Cambridge UP. Quoted in McNees, Eleanor (2004). "Punch and the Pope: Three Decades of Anti-Catholic Caricature". Victorian Periodicals Review. 37 (1): 18–45. JSTOR 20083988.

Further reading

• Barolsky, Paul (2007). Michelangelo's Nose: A Myth and Its Maker. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 9780271032726.