Goatee, Van Dyke or Anchor: What Chin Beards Are Called
Where do the names come from, and what do they mean?
Most beards that leave the cheeks bare go by one of three names: the goatee, the Van Dyke and the anchor. A goatee is hair on the chin; a Van Dyke adds a moustache that stays separate from it; an anchor stretches the chin part into a narrow strip along the jaw and comes with a moustache as well. Wikipedia notes that until the late 20th century 'goatee' meant only a tuft on the chin, like a billy goat's, and that by the 1990s it had become an umbrella word for any style with hair on the chin and none on the cheeks. The Van Dyke is named after Anthony van Dyck, the 17th-century Flemish painter, who wore it himself and painted many sitters with it, King Charles I of England among them, which is why the style was sometimes called a 'Charlie'. It was popular across Europe in the 17th century, died out in Britain after the Restoration and returned in the 19th. In Ukraine a pointed chin beard is called an espanyolka. The Ukrainian academic dictionary defines it simply as a short pointed beard, with no mention of a moustache, and takes its example from Zinaida Tulub's 1957 novel Liudolovy. The anchor is a recent name: Wahl describes it as a pointed chin beard, a soul patch and a chevron moustache, together shaped like a ship's anchor. In speech the espanyolka is often shortened to ispanka, the 'Spanish beard', and one Ukrainian barbershop chain gives that name to a goatee without a moustache.
A moustache decides the name, and the chin decides the shape
The moustache is where the names part ways, hence the searches with and without one. Strictly, a goatee has none. Join a moustache to the chin hair at the corners of the mouth and you get a ring that the Canadian barbershop Markcutit files as a circle beard, though its barbers admit almost everyone still calls it a goatee. A Van Dyke always has a moustache and always keeps a strip of shaved skin between it and the chin at each corner of the mouth; once the two touch, it turns into that ring. The anchor descriptions from Wahl and The Beard Club both include a moustache, so an anchor without one is really a chin beard with a strip along the jaw. Since the dictionaries leave the moustache out of the espanyolka, the word covers both versions in everyday speech, so name the moustache separately when you ask for it. By Markcutit's guide, a pointed Van Dyke adds length to a round face, and a little extra at the tip builds out a weak or receding chin. On a long face the same point stretches it further, so a short, rounded goatee sits better there. Growth matters as much: a connected goatee needs hair at the corners of the mouth, while the Van Dyke leaves exactly those corners bare, which suits men whose moustache never quite meets the chin. Wahl suggests six to eight weeks of growth before you shape an anchor, because the jaw strip and the point both need length to cut from.
Shave the cheeks every few days and keep the point centred
Keeping a chin style at home is mostly shaving around it. Markcutit puts the cheeks and neck at every two to three days and the moustache trimmed off the lip once a week, which fits the NHS advice to avoid shaving every day if you can. The American Academy of Dermatology tells men to shave in the direction the hair grows and to change the blade after five to seven shaves, and the NHS adds that a blunt razor and a very close shave raise the risk of ingrown hairs, and suggests leaving at least 1 mm of stubble on the neck. The point is the part that drifts. You trim one side with your hand close in and the other reaching across your face, so mark the centre under your lower lip by eye before you start, work both sides out from there and check the result with your phone camera from below. Keep the gaps at the corners of the mouth the same width, because a Van Dyke looks deliberate only while they match. In the chair, give the parts as well as the name: moustache joined or separate, bottom pointed or rounded, the length on the chin, how far an anchor runs along the jaw and where the neck ends. At 044 Barbershop in Kyiv the beard trim includes modelling and a dry or hot-towel shave, so the cheeks around the chin piece come off in the same visit. Come in with a few weeks on the chin, and the barber can set the point on the centre of your face and level both mouth corners, which a front mirror never shows at once.