Major names in the Homeric tradition have some pretty opaque etymological origins. But folk etymologies (really any ‘false’ etymologies that are important to the reception of myths in performance) are viable objects of study both for what they tell us about Greek thoughts on language and for what they tell us about the life of myths outside our extant poems. Some of these are ridiculous–as in “lipless Achilles” or the story of an Odysseus who was born on the road in the rain. But they all tell us something about how audiences responded to traditional tales.
Here are some etymologies for Paris. (and credit to @spannycat for asking about this)
Photios
“Ill-passing” [Dusparis] someone named for evil, for example when Paris was born. A bad-nickname. Also, a place that is difficult to pass through [duspariton], unpassable. Xenophon uses it this way in the Anabasis.
“Paris, of Paris [Paridos], the son of Hekabê who was called Alexander and also Paris. The name comes from the fire [Fire] in Ida. For Hekabê believed in a dream that she was giving birth to a torch which would consume the city with fire and the forest on Ida too. For this reason, she exposed him on Ida after he was born.”
“Paris: this is from going against [parienai] fate, which means to escape death. Or it is from a pêra which is a kind of bag. It comes from the fact that he was taken care of in a shepherd’s bag.”
What is up with all the variant etymologies? It seems that the name Paris is not from Greek origins. As with other famous names, once the origins of a word become obscure, later audiences re-analyze them in some fantastic ways.
“The hero ’ s other name, Paris, is clearly non-Greek. Watkins indicated a possible Luvian attestation of it and related it to the name of his father Priam, which is allegedly of the same etymology (Luvian: Pariyamuvas ‘ supreme in force ’ , from pari(ya)-, which is contracted in the case of Priam).³² It may thus seem that the name Paris is equivalent in sense to Alexandros. However, it is very doubtful that the poem appreciated the meaning of a name in a foreign language…” Kanavou 2015, 85)
Kanavou, Nikoletta. The Names of Homeric Heroes : Problems and Interpretations, De Gruyter, Inc., 2015
In a choral ode from Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, we find a folk etymology implied for Helen’s name. Where I have translated “killer”, the Greek has versions of the aorist of αἵρεω (εἶλον) which, without its augment looks like the beginning of Helen’s name (ἑλ-).
Aeschylus, Agamemnon 684-696
“Whoever pronounced a name
So thoroughly true?
Wasn’t it someone we’d not see
Guiding the tongue with luck
From a foreknowledge of fate?
Who named the spear-bride,
Struggled-over woman
Helen?
For, appropriately,
That ship-killer [hele-nas], man-killer [hel-andros]
City-killer [hele-ptolis], sailed
From her fine-spun, curtains
On the breath of great Zephyr
and many-manned bands
Of shield-bearers followed
The vanished journey struck
By the oars to the banks
Of leafy Simois
For a bloody strife.”
Ancient etymologies do not follow this Aeschylean play.
Etym. Gudianum
“Helenê. From attracting [helkein] many to her beauty. Or it is from helô, helkuô, she is the one who drags young men to her personal beauty. Or it comes from Hellas [Greece]. Or it comes from being born on the ground [helos].”
“Helenê: A heroine. From helô,helkuô, she is the one who drags young men to her personal beauty. Or it comes from Hellas [Greece]. Or it comes from being born on the ground [helos]. Or because she was thrown in a marshy [helôdei] place by Tyndareus once she obtained some divine prescience and she was taken back up by Leda. Helenê was named from pity [heleos].”
Modern linguistics show that Helen’s name is just really hard to figure out.
Some Modern Material
In Lakonia, Helen was original spelled with a digamma. (And this may have extended to Corinth and Chalcidice too Cf. R. Wachter Non-Attic Vase Inscriptions 2001, §251).
74 Von Kamptz 1958, 136 suggests that her name is a “cognate of σέλας” to evoke a sense of “shining”, as in her beauty. Cf. Kanavou 2015, 72
Vedic Saranyu: Skutsch 1987, 189; Puhvel 1987, 141–143 (The initial breathing in Greek often points to a lost initial *s but the digamma in certain dialects confuses this) The Vedic name means swift. The PIE root suggested here is *suel-.
Helen has variously been suggested as coming from a vegetation goddess (see Helena Dendritis, Paus. 3.19.9–10; Herodotus 6.61; cf. Skutsch 1987) or a goddess of light.
Major names in the Homeric tradition have some pretty opaque etymological origins. But folk etymologies (really any ‘false’ etymologies that are important to the reception of myths in performance) are viable objects of study both for what they tell us about Greek thoughts on language and for what they tell us about the life of myths outside our extant poems. Some of these are ridiculous–as in “lipless Achilles” or the story of an Odysseus who was born on the road in the rain. But they all tell us something about how audiences responded to traditional tales.
Here are some etymologies for Paris. (and credit to @spannycat for asking about this)
Photios
“Ill-passing” [Dusparis] someone named for evil, for example when Paris was born. A bad-nickname. Also, a place that is difficult to pass through [duspariton], unpassable. Xenophon uses it this way in the Anabasis.
“Paris, of Paris [Paridos], the son of Hekabê who was called Alexander and also Paris. The name comes from the fire [Fire] in Ida. For Hekabê believed in a dream that she was giving birth to a torch which would consume the city with fire and the forest on Ida too. For this reason, she exposed him on Ida after he was born.”
“Paris: this is from going against [parienai] fate, which means to escape death. Or it is from a pêra which is a kind of bag. It comes from the fact that he was taken care of in a shepherd’s bag.”
What is up with all the variant etymologies? It seems that the name Paris is not from Greek origins. As with other famous names, once the origins of a word become obscure, later audiences re-analyze them in some fantastic ways.
“The hero ’ s other name, Paris, is clearly non-Greek. Watkins indicated a possible Luvian attestation of it and related it to the name of his father Priam, which is allegedly of the same etymology (Luvian: Pariyamuvas ‘ supreme in force ’ , from pari(ya)-, which is contracted in the case of Priam).³² It may thus seem that the name Paris is equivalent in sense to Alexandros. However, it is very doubtful that the poem appreciated the meaning of a name in a foreign language…” Kanavou 2015, 85)
Kanavou, Nikoletta. The Names of Homeric Heroes : Problems and Interpretations, De Gruyter, Inc., 2015
Major names in the Homeric tradition have some pretty opaque etymological origins. But folk etymologies (really any ‘false’ etymologies that are important to the reception of myths in performance) are viable objects of study both for what they tell us about Greek thoughts on language and for what they tell us about the life of myths outside our extant poems. Some of these are ridiculous–as in “lipless Achilles” or the story of an Odysseus who was born on the road in the rain. But they all tell us something about how audiences responded to traditional tales.
Here are some etymologies for Paris. (and credit to @spannycat for asking about this)
Photios
“Ill-passing” [Dusparis] someone named for evil, for example when Paris was born. A bad-nickname. Also, a place that is difficult to pass through [duspariton], unpassable. Xenophon uses it this way in the Anabasis.
“Paris, of Paris [Paridos], the son of Hekabê who was called Alexander and also Paris. The name comes from the fire [Fire] in Ida. For Hekabê believed in a dream that she was giving birth to a torch which would consume the city with fire and the forest on Ida too. For this reason, she exposed him on Ida after he was born.”
“Paris: this is from going against [parienai] fate, which means to escape death. Or it is from a pêra which is a kind of bag. It comes from the fact that he was taken care of in a shepherd’s bag.”
What is up with all the variant etymologies? It seems that the name Paris is not from Greek origins. As with other famous names, once the origins of a word become obscure, later audiences re-analyze them in some fantastic ways.
“The hero ’ s other name, Paris, is clearly non-Greek. Watkins indicated a possible Luvian attestation of it and related it to the name of his father Priam, which is allegedly of the same etymology (Luvian: Pariyamuvas ‘ supreme in force ’ , from pari(ya)-, which is contracted in the case of Priam).³² It may thus seem that the name Paris is equivalent in sense to Alexandros. However, it is very doubtful that the poem appreciated the meaning of a name in a foreign language…” Kanavou 2015, 85)
Kanavou, Nikoletta. The Names of Homeric Heroes : Problems and Interpretations, De Gruyter, Inc., 2015
A good friend (@professormortis) asked me yesterday if the internet rumors are right that the etymology of Kerberos (or the Latin Cerberus) indicates “spotted” because it is cognate with Sanskrit karbarah, sabalah “spotted, speckled;” and, therefore, that it is related to our pet name “Spot”. This is a nice story, but like many nice stories, it is probably not true.
But the idea is not one of those internet age fantasies. It has actually appeared in the annals of historical linguistics–internet etymologies selected this one because it is cool and funny. But linguists have largely abandoned the idea.
Pierre Chantraine (Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque, 1968) lists this as a “doubted for good reasons”. (Here’s a link for a free download of the dictionary). Robert Beekes in his Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Brill: 2010) is much more certain that the Sanskrit word has no connection to the Greek word.
The article Beekes dismisses (Bruce Lincoln. 1977 “The Hellhound.” Journal of Indo-European Studies 7: 273-286.) suggests that the dog names in IE myth like Kerberos are derived from a PIE root *gher which has to do with growling.
Here’s a summary and an anticipation of what the rest of the post will cover.
Things Kerberos does not mean:
Spotted or Spot
Growling thing
Flesh-eating
Heavy-headed
New Proposals (from twitter, see below)
From Proto-turkic: kara-boru (“black-wolfhound”)
Phoenician root *klb-‘rz (“hound of the earth”)
Trying to make sense of the dog’s name has good precedent in antiquity. There are etymological and allegorical interpretations to entertain us.
Kerberioi: Weak-men. They also call the Kimmerians Kerberians. And some call their city Kerberia, but others call it Kimmeria. Others say that Kimmê is as place in Hades.
“For Cerberus is the earth, that means the consumer of all corpses. This is where Cerberus is also said to be from, just as kreoberos, that is “devouring flesh”: from here we also get “reclining over bones”, for the earth does not consume bones quickly”
nam Cerberus terra est, id est consumptrix omnium corporum. unde et Cerberus dictus est, quasi κρεοβόρος, id est carnem vorans: unde legitur “ossa super recubans” : nam non ossa citius terra consumit.
On the number of Kerberos’ heads
In a Pindaric fragment, Kerberos has one hundred heads! (Dith. Fr. 249 b Κέρβερος <> ἑκατογκεφάλας (vel ἑκατόγκρανος vel sim.). In vase images, he has two or three (typically). Lincoln and many others (see Daniel Ogden, Dragons, Serpents, and Slayers 2013: 96-106) note how his number of heads shift and that a vase image of him with two heads may indicate that he was once part of a pair of dogs (usually Orthos, matching pairs of dogs elsewhere in IE traditions).
“After she was pregnant, she gave birth to powerful-minded children,
First, she gave birth to Orthos, Geryones’ hound.
Then she bore an impossible, unspeakable thing,
Kerberos raw flesh-eating, bronze-voiced hound of Hades,
With fifty heads, a creature shameless and strong.”
The number of heads seems to stick at three and various reasons are given to explain why or how this could be.
Heraclitus the Paradoxographer, On Incredible things 33
“Concerning Kerberos: This could be the same as with the Hydra. For that dog had two puppies, and he seemed to have three heads because the puppies were always walking alongside their father.”
“Kerberos himself is shown to be three-headed perhaps rightfully to hint at the three-shaped nature of philosophy: the parts we call logic, physics, and ethics.”
A few years ago we witnessed the true beauty of twitter when we had a long discussion about this, yielding two new proposes which are really no worse than the Byzantine folk etymologies. One, suggests that it may be a borrowing from Asia Minor, related to Proto-turkic kara-boru (“black-wolfhound”); the other posits a Phoenician root *klb-‘rz (“hound of the earth”). I could describe how we got there, but I would rather just post all the tweets here. It is also instructive to post them again, because it is a reminder that social media can be used to build things up instead of burning them down
In a choral ode from Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, we find a folk etymology implied for Helen’s name. Where I have translated “killer”, the Greek has versions of the aorist of αἵρεω (εἶλον) which, without its augment looks like the beginning of Helen’s name (ἑλ-).
Aeschylus, Agamemnon 684-696
“Whoever pronounced a name
So thoroughly true?
Wasn’t it someone we’d not see
Guiding the tongue with luck
From a foreknowledge of fate?
Who named the spear-bride,
Struggled-over woman
Helen?
For, appropriately,
That ship-killer [hele-nas], man-killer [hel-andros]
City-killer [hele-ptolis], sailed
From her fine-spun, curtains
On the breath of great Zephyr
and many-manned bands
Of shield-bearers followed
The vanished journey struck
By the oars to the banks
Of leafy Simois
For a bloody strife.”
Ancient etymologies do not follow this Aeschylean play.
Etym. Gudianum
“Helenê. From attracting [helkein] many to her beauty. Or it is from helô, helkuô, she is the one who drags young men to her personal beauty. Or it comes from Hellas [Greece]. Or it comes from being born on the ground [helos].”
“Helenê: A heroine. From helô,helkuô, she is the one who drags young men to her personal beauty. Or it comes from Hellas [Greece]. Or it comes from being born on the ground [helos]. Or because she was thrown in a marshy [helôdei] place by Tyndareus once she obtained some divine prescience and she was taken back up by Leda. Helenê was named from pity [heleos].”
Modern linguistics show that Helen’s name is just really hard to figure out.
Some Modern Material
In Lakonia, Helen was original spelled with a digamma. (And this may have extended to Corinth and Chalcidice too Cf. R. Wachter Non-Attic Vase Inscriptions 2001, §251).
74 Von Kamptz 1958, 136 suggests that her name is a “cognate of σέλας” to evoke a sense of “shining”, as in her beauty. Cf. Kanavou 2015, 72
Vedic Saranyu: Skutsch 1987, 189; Puhvel 1987, 141–143 (The initial breathing in Greek often points to a lost initial *s but the digamma in certain dialects confuses this) The Vedic name means swift. The PIE root suggested here is *suel-.
Helen has variously been suggested as coming from a vegetation goddess (see Helena Dendritis, Paus. 3.19.9–10; Herodotus 6.61; cf. Skutsch 1987) or a goddess of light.
Major names in the Homeric tradition have some pretty opaque etymological origins. But folk etymologies (really any ‘false’ etymologies that are important to the reception of myths in performance) are viable objects of study both for what they tell us about Greek thoughts on language and for what they tell us about the life of myths outside our extant poems. Some of these are ridiculous–as in “lipless Achilles” or the story of an Odysseus who was born on the road in the rain. But they all tell us something about how audiences responded to traditional tales.
Here are some etymologies for Paris. (and credit to @spannycat for asking about this)
Photios
“Ill-passing” [Dusparis] someone named for evil, for example when Paris was born. A bad-nickname. Also, a place that is difficult to pass through [duspariton], unpassable. Xenophon uses it this way in the Anabasis.
“Paris, of Paris [Paridos], the son of Hekabê who was called Alexander and also Paris. The name comes from the fire [Fire] in Ida. For Hekabê believed in a dream that she was giving birth to a torch which would consume the city with fire and the forest on Ida too. For this reason, she exposed him on Ida after he was born.”
“Paris: this is from going against [parienai] fate, which means to escape death. Or it is from a pêra which is a kind of bag. It comes from the fact that he was taken care of in a shepherd’s bag.”
What is up with all the variant etymologies? It seems that the name Paris is not from Greek origins. As with other famous names, once the origins of a word become obscure, later audiences re-analyze them in some fantastic ways.
“The hero ’ s other name, Paris, is clearly non-Greek. Watkins indicated a possible Luvian attestation of it and related it to the name of his father Priam, which is allegedly of the same etymology (Luvian: Pariyamuvas ‘ supreme in force ’ , from pari(ya)-, which is contracted in the case of Priam).³² It may thus seem that the name Paris is equivalent in sense to Alexandros. However, it is very doubtful that the poem appreciated the meaning of a name in a foreign language…” Kanavou 2015, 85)
Kanavou, Nikoletta. The Names of Homeric Heroes : Problems and Interpretations, De Gruyter, Inc., 2015
In a choral ode from Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, we find a folk etymology implied for Helen’s name. Where I have translated “killer”, the Greek has versions of the aorist of αἵρεω (εἶλον) which, without its augment looks like the beginning of Helen’s name (ἑλ-).
Aeschylus, Agamemnon 684-696
“Whoever pronounced a name
So thoroughly true?
Wasn’t it someone we’d not see
Guiding the tongue with luck
From a foreknowledge of fate?
Who named the spear-bride,
Struggled-over woman
Helen?
For, appropriately,
That ship-killer [hele-nas], man-killer [hel-andros]
City-killer [hele-ptolis], sailed
From her fine-spun, curtains
On the breath of great Zephyr
and many-manned bands
Of shield-bearers followed
The vanished journey struck
By the oars to the banks
Of leafy Simois
For a bloody strife.”
Ancient etymologies do not follow this Aeschylean play.
Etym. Gudianum
“Helenê. From attracting [helkein] many to her beauty. Or it is from helô, helkuô, she is the one who drags young men to her personal beauty. Or it comes from Hellas [Greece]. Or it comes from being born on the ground [helos].”
“Helenê: A heroine. From helô,helkuô, she is the one who drags young men to her personal beauty. Or it comes from Hellas [Greece]. Or it comes from being born on the ground [helos]. Or because she was thrown in a marshy [helôdei] place by Tyndareus once she obtained some divine prescience and she was taken back up by Leda. Helenê was named from pity [heleos].”
Modern linguistics show that Helen’s name is just really hard to figure out.
Some Modern Material
In Lakonia, Helen was original spelled with a digamma. (And this may have extended to Corinth and Chalcidice too Cf. R. Wachter Non-Attic Vase Inscriptions 2001, §251).
74 Von Kamptz 1958, 136 suggests that her name is a “cognate of σέλας” to evoke a sense of “shining”, as in her beauty. Cf. Kanavou 2015, 72
Vedic Saranyu: Skutsch 1987, 189; Puhvel 1987, 141–143 (The initial breathing in Greek often points to a lost initial *s but the digamma in certain dialects confuses this) The Vedic name means swift. The PIE root suggested here is *suel-.
Helen has variously been suggested as coming from a vegetation goddess (see Helena Dendritis, Paus. 3.19.9–10; Herodotus 6.61; cf. Skutsch 1987) or a goddess of light.
“The name Odysseus has been explained through the following story. For they claim that when Antikleia, Odysseus’ mother, was pregnant she was travelling [hodeuousan] on Mt. Neritos in Ithaka, and it began to rain [husantos] terribly Because of her labor and fear she collapsed and gave birth to Odysseus there. So, he obtained is name in this way, since Zeus, on the road [hodon] rained [hûsen].”
It is more typical to derive Odysseus’ name from the verb odussomai, which means something like “being hateful, being hated”. Autolykos, Odysseus’ maternal grandfather, is reported to have named him in the Odyssey (19.407–409).
“I have come to this point hated [odussamenos] by many—
Both men and women over the man-nourishing earth.
So let his name be Ody[s]seus…”
Even in antiquity there was debate about how to interpret odussamenos. A scholion offers three explanations: “[someone] who is hated. Or who has rage. Or has harmed [someone]” (ὀδυσσάμενος] μισηθείς· ἢ ὀργὴν ἀγαγών· ἢ βλάψας.)
And many have seen playing with this name-verb accord earlier in the epic when Athena asks Zeus (1.60-62)
“…Didn’t Odysseus please you
By making sacrifices along the ships of the Argives
In broad Troy? Why are you so hateful [ôdusao] to him, Zeus?”
Modern scholars get in on the game too Marót in Acta Antiqua 8 (1960) 1-6 suggests that the name is developed from the scar (οὐλή=oulê) by which Odysseus is recognized, thus explaining in part the Latin (and Etruscan) variant Ulysses.
For a succinct discussion, see Norman Austin 2009, 92-93 from his essay “Name Magic in the Odyssey” in Lillian Doherty’s Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Homer’s Odyssey (originally printed in California Studies in Classical Antiquity 5 (1972) 1-19, available through JSTOR). See also W. B. Stanford’s “The Homeric Etymology of the Name Odysseus.” Classical Philology 47 (1952) 209-213.
“For this reason, everybody, when it is too hot or too moist, will either die or, if it persists, will be sterile. Summer and winter bear witness to this, since in the first, the air is hot and the wheat dries up, while in the other nature does not long to struggle with the rain and the cold to bring new life—instead, it waits for spring. Therefore, the roots of creation are two-fold: fire and water. For this reason there are placed at the threshold during wedding ceremonies since here is where things join and since the fire is male, which the semen is there, and the water is female, since a fetus develops from her moisture and the force of their binding together is Venus. This is why the comic poet says “Venus is his conqueress, do you see this?” not because Venus wants to conquer [vincere] but because she plans to bind [vincire].”
Inde omne corpus, ubi nimius ardor aut humor, aut interit aut, si manet, sterile. Cui testis aestas et hiems, quod in altera aer ardet et spica aret, in altera natura ad nascenda cum imbre et frigore luctare non volt et potius ver expectat. Igitur causa nascendi duplex: ignis et aqua. Ideo ea nuptiis in limine adhibentur, quod coniungitur hic, et mas ignis, quod ibi semen, aqua femina, quod fetus ab eius humore, et horum vinctionis vis Venus.
Hinc comicus:
Huic victrix Venus, videsne haec?
Non quod vincere velit Venus, sed vincire.
