A Greek nose, and the two profiles the name is used for

What a Greek nose is: two meanings, one name

A Greek nose is a description of a profile, not a diagnosis. In everyday use it means a bridge that runs straight from the root of the nose to the tip, with no hump and no dip. In the classical sense it also means the forehead and the nose read as one line, with little or no dip between them.

A straight bridge

This is the meaning most people have in mind. Seen from the side, the line from the radix, the root of the nose between the eyes, to the tip neither rises into a hump nor sinks into a dip.

Surgeons are careful with the word straight here. A letter in the Aesthetic Surgery Journal recommends calling a straight profile rectilinear instead, because a nose that is straight from the side can still lean to one side from the front. Calling it straight, the authors write, can mislead patients and surgeons alike.

The opposite case, a bridge that rises into a hump, is covered on the dorsal hump page.

The Greek profile

In classical sculpture the line of the forehead carries on down the nose with almost no break. In clinical terms that describes a high radix: the root of the nose sits high, and the angle between forehead and nose is wide.

A review of how surgeons manage that angle describes the same picture from the consulting room. With a high radix, it says, the forehead continues into the nose in a straight line, and the nose looks longer than it is.

The radix runs from the nasion, where the nasal bones meet the bone of the forehead, down to the sellion, the deepest point of the profile. The Aesthetic Surgery Journal letter notes that the two terms are often confused, and that the deepest point of the bone does not always sit under the deepest point of the skin.

Why the difference matters in a consultation

The two meanings point in opposite directions. Under the first, a Greek nose is something a patient might ask for. Under the second, it is a profile some surgeons offer to correct, by lowering the root. A request for "a Greek nose" can therefore be heard as the opposite of what was meant.

A word is a poor way to describe a shape. Bring profile photographs to the consultation and point to the line you mean.

How common a Greek nose is

No study counts Greek noses, because nobody measures that category. A page that calls the shape rare without a figure behind it is guessing.

What researchers do measure is the nasofrontal angle, the angle where the forehead meets the nose. The wider it is, the flatter the change from forehead to nose, and the closer a profile comes to the classical line.

The textbook ideal of 115 to 130 degrees comes from a 1984 reference text. Measurements of real people regularly fall outside it:

• In 115 young Turkish university students with no previous surgery, the mean angle was 133 degrees in women and 124 in men. Individual values ran from 114 to 148 degrees in women and from 83 to 150 in men.
• In 28 Turkish men having septorhinoplasty, the mean was 148 degrees before surgery and 144.5 afterwards. The authors noted that earlier studies put Turkish adults who were happy with their noses at roughly 139.5 to 146 degrees.
• In 200 people seeking rhinoplasty in Shiraz, Iran, only 8 had a radix judged to sit high. A low radix was far more common, in 27 of the 100 men and 45 of the 100 women.

The spread inside a single group is wider than the differences between groups. A wide angle with little dip at the root is a normal variant, and how common it looks depends on who was measured and how.

What a Greek nose looks like from the front

The name describes the side view only. From the front, a nose with a straight profile can be narrow or broad, finish in a fine or a rounded tip, and sit centred or lean to one side.

That is the reason the Aesthetic Surgery Journal letter prefers rectilinear to straight: a profile can be a clean line while the nose is deviated when seen from the front.

Each front-view feature has its own page here: width, a rounded tip, and a nose that sits off centre, which often comes with a breathing question as well.

Greek noses in women and in men

Measured averages differ by sex, and so do preferences, which is why no single Greek nose is the ideal for both.

In the Turkish students above, the women's average forehead-nose angle was about 9 degrees wider than the men's. Two preference studies point in a similar direction, with differences between them:

• In a 2023 study in Iran, 203 volunteers from a hospital facial plastic surgery clinic chose between 3D images of one male and one female face, with a single feature changed at a time. A straight bridge was the most chosen option for both faces, by 55.7 per cent for the female face and 56.2 per cent for the male face. The preferred forehead-nose angles were about 134 degrees for the female face and 138 for the male, both wider than the textbook range.
• In a 2013 study in Saudi Arabia, 127 raters chose between versions of a male and a female profile. Male raters preferred a bridge slightly below straight on the male face (57.1 per cent) and a straight bridge on the female face (58.9 per cent). Female raters preferred the slightly lower bridge on the male face (71.8 per cent) and split evenly between straight and slightly lower on the female face (47.9 per cent each).

These are pictures of two models, rated by two groups of people. They show that what counts as attractive moves with the face, the rater and the population. They are not a verdict on any particular nose.

Men's noses also tend to differ in skin thickness and in the published reference angles. The male rhinoplasty page covers what that changes.

Greek nose or Roman nose

The difference is the bridge. A Greek nose is straight in profile. A Roman, or aquiline, nose curves outwards along the bridge, which is what a dorsal hump looks like from the side.

Both are normal anatomy. The useful question with a Roman nose is what the hump is made of: bone, cartilage or both. That, and what has to be rebuilt once it is lowered, is on the dorsal hump page.

Can rhinoplasty give you a Greek nose?

It depends which Greek nose is meant, because the two need different operations with different limits.

Straightening a bridge that has a hump

This is the usual request. Lowering a hump opens the roof of the nose, and the roof then has to be closed again, usually with controlled cuts in the bone. The dorsal hump page sets out what that involves and what it cannot change.

Putting a dip into a profile that has none

Deepening the root means taking bone away at the radix, and the tissue over it is the thickest on the nose. In a CT study of 190 adults, the soft tissue measured 6.7 mm on average at the sellion, against 2.1 mm over the rhinion, where the bony bridge meets the cartilage.

Because of that thickness, a change made to the bone at the root may show less at the skin than the same change made lower down the bridge. That is an inference from the measurements, not a result any of the studies cited here reports.

Which way the root needs to move also differs between people. In the Shiraz sample, men more often needed the projection of the root reduced (47 of 100) and women more often needed it built up (48 of 100).

Some clinics present ultrasonic instruments, or removing part of the procerus, the small muscle that runs over the root of the nose between the eyebrows, as the answer for this area. Ask what comparative evidence supports the claim. The ultrasonic rhinoplasty page sets out what the randomised trials measured, and the preservation rhinoplasty page does the same for that technique.

Why perfectly straight is not always the target

In the Saudi study, both male and female raters preferred a bridge slightly below straight on the male face. A nose can also meet every reference angle and still look wrong on the face it belongs to. The target is the face, not the label.

Can filler make a nose look Greek?

Filler can make a small hump look straighter by adding volume above and below it. The nose ends up slightly larger, not smaller, and because filler only adds, it cannot deepen a root.

The nose is also the most common site in published cases of blindness caused by filler. The non-surgical rhinoplasty page has the figures.

What only an examination can settle

Four things decide what is possible, and a selfie shows none of them reliably.

The first is the forehead-nose angle, measured on standardised profile photographs taken at a fixed distance and head position. A phone held at arm's length changes the profile it records, and the post on how to read a before and after photograph explains why.

The second is how thick the soft tissue is at the root and over the bridge. The third is whether any hump is bone, cartilage or both.

The fourth is whether the nose is straight from the front as well as in profile, and whether both sides of it breathe freely. The breathing guide covers how obstruction is assessed and scored.