Well, a baby's hair color is only sometimes the color of his/her hair as he/she grows.

I believe this is particularly the case with red heads, isn't it? I was born with jet black hair, but I was blonde most of my childhood. Eye color can also change.

For me, Janie is a blonde and a Josie is a brunette, but I'm sure that's strictly because those are descriptions of girls I've known with each name.

I do know what you mean....there is a gal at church I am forever calling by the wrong name because I just don't think she Looks like her name.

In this case, I think both are darling classics that will work no matter what you decide she looks like, and within days you'll have a hard time remembering  that you imagined her as something else even if you find her looks change. Good luck!  :)

I sometimes run into people who don't "look like" their names, but I usually find it's because of someone else I knew with the same name.  Generally, I think your child will become your standard idea for what people with that name should look like.  

But, since you asked about my perceptions of the names you are considering:

For me, an imaginary Jo/Josephine has dark hair, though my strongest associations with the name are Jo from Little Women, Jo from Facts of Life & Josephine Baker, and they all had dark hair (I think, I don't really remember Jo from LW's description-but I imagined her with dark hair).  I don't see anything "wrong" with a blond or ginger Jo/Josephine though.  As a red head, the only names I feel really shouldn't be used on a red haired baby are things like Penny, Ginger, Rusty, etc.

Jane/Janey also has (very) dark in my imagination.  However, this is very much because of a Janey I know IRL.  She is a lovely, artistic/hippie type who keeps her hair dyed very dark black-often with streaks of red or purple.  Despite this, I can think of several famous Janes who are blonde:  Jane Krakowski, Jane Fonda, Jayne Mansfield.  

I don't associate either Jane or Josephine with any particular hair color or element of appearance.  However, with some names it is possible to have a disjunction between name and appearance that might be disconcerting.  I am thinking of a student in one of my classes years ago.  Her name was Misty Dawn, and let's just say that she was somewhat less than ethereal....

I agree with the others. Jane is a blonde, Josephine is a brunette. Although it is certainly true that you can't gauge much about a kid's ultimate appearance when they are born, I DO think that you can look at a baby and kind of know what name is right for them.   That's why I don't prename my babies, I work off of a list.  I was pretty sure my first would be Lydia, but she came out redheaded, so Lydia just seemed all wrong.  We probably would have named our second Peter, but he was all redheaded and skinny when he was born, and it just didn't seem right.  So we chose different names from our list, and the names suit my children perfectly, even though my son at least looks totally different.  

I always tell people to wait until they see their babies to name them. I know this is totally off-trend, but it has worked well for us.  It's important for kids to suit their names. There were two boys in my program in college that had names that just BELONGED to each other, and I could never keep them straight.  

I think it's probably better not to dwell too much on matching names to a particular coloring. As JnH's Mom said above, that can change—I was born blonde and stayed blonde for most of my childhood, but when I hit middle school my hair started getting darker and now I'm undeniably a brunette (though I *was* in denial and dyed my hair blonde for many years).

I also think that there are some uncomfortable racial undertones to assigning a particular coloring to a name... kind of like, debating whether a name is a "blonde" or "redhead" name sort of ignores all the non-white people who are out there using that name. (Leaving aside that there are very occasionally people of other races with natural blonde or red hair). I can see how some names are strongly associated with a particular ethnicity—most people would probably see a Francesca or a Giovanna as dark-haired Caucasian, and an Astrid or Ingrid as blonde Caucasian. But even then, saying that these names "fit" a certain coloring better than others is invoking ethnic stereotypes—not all Italians are dark and not all Scandinavians are blonde. With Jane and Josephine in particular, given that they are English and French names respectively and that the English and French have extensive histories of colonialism and immigration, I would say that all preconceptions of coloring should be thrown out the window. 

If I had to choose between the two, though, I would probably pick Jane for blonde and Josephine for dark... though I've known people with those names and the opposite coloring, and I never thought anything of it (Josie was tall, blonde and sporty. Jane was a short, slightly chubby Asian girl). But I would also pick Jane for short and Josephine for tall, and Jane for skinny and Josephine for plump... I mean, it's easy to assign attributes to names and create "characters" in our heads, but in terms of naming a child, I don't think it's really healthy to have any set expectations of how they will turn out. If you name her Jane, then Jane will be whatever your child is, and same for Josephine. 

Also, I might beware of the nickname Janie for Jane.  I read that as "Jan-ie", not "Jane-ie".  Might or might not be a problem.

I happen to know a dark-haired Josephine so I do associate it with her, but Jane brings no specific hair color to mind. But I agree with the others to not dwell on hair coloring. I was born with red hair but it is now dark brown, and I know blondes whose hair color turned brown when they were teens.

If you like both equally, perhaps wait until she is born and see if one feels more right to you then.

I totally have preconceived notions of what a baby with a name should look like. If I meet a baby/toddler/adult with a name that I don't automatically think fits that mold I can usually get over it fairly easily but I have come across some people, who to me, don't suit their name. Generally though it's more of a personal thing where *I* think certain names suit certain babies. For instance, we had quite a lot of names on our list when I was pregnant and we wanted to wait until our daughter was born before naming her because we wanted to know what she looked like.

Within a couple of days of her being born we had eliminated lots of the names as we didn't think they fit. Interestingly, even though she doesn't look that similar to her newborn photos now she still seems to fit the same names and not the others.  It's entirely possible that if she looked different when born we may have gone with a different name. 

For the record I've met several Janes and Josephines and they have all been of various colouring. However, to me Josephine is definitely blonde/fair and Janes are brunettes. I could easily see it the other way around, though that is my first impression (which I note is pretty much opposite to everyone else here!).  I'd say Josephine for a red-head or strawberry blonde.

In my experience, the hair colour that a Caucasian baby comes out with is no indication of what their hair will be like even a few months from birth. I wouldn't choose your name just from that, as hair colour is by no means constant.

DD1 was born with light brown hair that turned to a golden/strawberry blonde colour. We picked Xanthe as a name for DD2 which means "yellow, golden, fair-haired" and she was born with jet black hair. It did become a traditional blonde colour and I'm glad I didn't let her appearance at birth put me off using a name that I still adore. I know now her hair is like mine was, which will probably be light brown by 10yrs and mid-dark brown by adulthood but I think it's still a good name for her and it has an "appearance" tied up with it more than your standard name because of the meaning.

Mentally, I don't get a picture of a specific hair color for Jane, but Josephine to me is either auburn-brunette-black hair for some reason.

However, I knew a Josie growing up (she's a Josephine) who had long blonde hair.

Jane and Josephine could fit any appearance for me--the only ones of each I happened to know in real life both had dark hair, but the names could fit a blonde or redhead or whatever for me just as easily.  I do link some names with both appearance and personality, and could be put off using one or drawn to another for that reason.  For instance, because my kids are half Asian and half Caucasian, we knew without a doubt that they would have dark eyes, dark hair, and likely non-pale complexions.  Because I focus on meanings of names, choices meaning fair or white (like Fiona or Alban) just felt weird to me, and those names fell lower on my list.  I wouldn't have had a problem using either Jane or Josephine, though.  Another name I liked a lot was Holly, which to me is sweet and cheerful and jolly.  My DH didn't like it, and we picked 1vy for our daughter instead--it turns out to be a much better fit for her, I think, because it fits her more intense and spunky personality. 

I have seen people who don't "fit" their names, but to me it's more style based than anything, such as a 20 year old named Karen or Debbie (these are primarily boomer names to me), or possibly an attractive person with what I consider to be a plain/unattractive name, or vice versa.  These are by far the exceptions, though, I think--for the most part, names are quite malleable, and grow to fit the person we know who has them.