CHAPTER I.

NAMES PROM THE GREEK.

Passing from Persian to Greek names, we feel at once that we are nearer home, and that we claim a nearer kindred in thoughts and habits, if not in blood, with the sons of Javan, than with the fire-worshippers. The national names are thus almost always explicable by the language itself, with a few exceptions, either when the name was an importation from Egypt or Phœnicia, whence many of the earlier arts had been brought.

Each Greek had but one name, which was given to him by his father either on or before the tenth day of his life, when a sacrifice and banquet was held. Genealogies were exceedingly interesting to the Greeks, as the mutual connection of city with city, race with race, was thus kept up, and community of ancestry was regarded as a bond of alliance, attaching the Athenians, for instance, to the Asiatic Ionians as both sons of Ion, or the Spartans to the Syracusans, as likewise descended from Doros. Each individual state had its deified ancestor, and each family of note a hero parent, to whom worship was offered at every feast, and who was supposed still to exert active protection over his votaries. The political rights of the citizens, and the place they occupied in the army, depended on their power of tracing their line from the forefather of a recognized tribe, after whose name the whole were termed with the patronymic termination ides (the son of). This was only, however, a distinction, for surnames were unknown, and each man possessed merely the individual personal appellation by which he was always called, without any title, be his station what it might. Families used, however, to mark themselves by recurring constantly to the same name. It was the correct thing to give the eldest son that of his paternal grandfather, as Kimon, Miltiades, then Kimon again, if the old man were dead, for if he were living it would have been putting another in his place, a bad omen, and therefore a father’s name was hardly ever given to a son. Sometimes, however, the prefix was preserved, and the termination varied, so as to mark the family without destroying the individual identity. Thus, Leonidas, the third son of Anaxandridas, repeated with an augmentative his grandfather’s name of Leo (a lion), as his father, Anaxandridas, did that of his own great grandfather, Anaxandras (king of man), whose son Eurycratidas was named from his grandfather Eurycrates. A like custom prevailed among the old English.

After the Romans had subdued Greece and extended the powers of becoming citizens, the name of the adopting patron would be taken by his client, and thus Latin and Greek titles became mixed together. Later, Greek second names became coined, either from patronymics, places, or events, and finally ran into the ordinary European system of surnames.

Among the names here ensuing will only be found those that concern the history of Christian names. Many a great heart-thrilling sound connected with the brightest lights of the ancient world must be passed by, because it has not pleased the capricious will of after-generations to perpetuate it, or so exceptionally as not to be worth mentioning.

Some of the female Greek names were appropriate words and epithets; but others, perhaps the greater number, were merely men’s names with the feminine termination in a or e, often irrespective of their meaning. Some of these have entirely perished from the lips of men, others have been revived by some enterprising writer in search of a fresh title for a heroine. Such is Corinna (probably from Persephone’s title Κόρη (Koré), a maiden)maiden), the Bœotian poetess, who won a wreath of victory at Thebes, and was therefore the example from whom Mdme. de Staël named her brilliant Corinne, followed in her turn by numerous French damsels; and in an Italian chronicle of the early middle ages, the lady whom we have been used to call Rowena, daughter of Henghist, has turned into Corinna; whilst Cora, probably through Lord Byron’s poem, is a favourite in America. Such too is Aspasia (welcome), from the literary fame of its first owner chosen by the taste of the seventeenth century as the title under which to praise the virtues of Lady Elizabeth Hastings. In the Rambler and Spectator days, real or fictitious characters were usually introduced under some classical or pastoral appellation, and ladies corresponded with each other under the soubriquets of nymph, goddess, or heroine, and in virtue of its sound Aspasia was adopted among these. It has even been heard as a Christian name in a cottage. “Her name’s Aspasia, but us calls her Spash.”^[24]

Section I.

Greek appellations may be divided into various classes; the first, those of the gods and early heroes are derived from languages inexplicable even by the classical Greeks. These were seldom or never given to human beings, though derivatives from them often were.

The second class is of those formed from epithets in the spoken language. These belonged to the Greeks of the historical age, and such as were borne by the Macedonian conquerors became spread throughout the East, thus sometimes falling to the lot of early saints of the Church, and becoming universally popular in Christendom. Of others of merely classic association a few survived among the native Greeks, while others were resuscitated at intervals; first, by the vanity of decaying Rome; next, by the revival of ancient literature in the Cinque-cento; then, by the magniloquent taste of the Scudery romances in France; again, in France, by the republican mania; and, in the present time, by the same taste in America, and by the reminiscences of the modern Greeks.

After the preaching of the Gospel, Greece had vigour enough to compose appropriate baptismal names for the converts; and it is curious to observe that no other country could have ever been so free from the trammels of hereditary nomenclature, for no other has so complete a set of names directly bearing upon Christianity. So graceful are they in sound as well as meaning, and so honoured for those who bore them, that many have spread throughout Europe.

Lastly, even modern Greek has thrown out many names of graceful sound, which are, however, chiefly confined to the Romaic.

Section II.—Names from Zeus.

At the head of the whole Greek system stands the mighty Zeus (Ζεύς), a word that has been erected into a proper name for the thundering father of gods and men, whilst the cognate θεὸς (theos) passed into a generic term; just as at Rome the Deus Pater (God-Father), or Jupiter, from the same source, became the single god, and deus the general designation.

All come from the same source as the Sanscrit Deva, and are connected with the open sky, and the idea of light that has produced our word day. We shall come upon them again and again; but for the present we will confine ourselves to the personal names produced by Zeus, in his individual character, leaving those from Theos to the Christian era, to which most of them belong.

Their regular declension of Zeus made Dios the genitive case; and thus Diodorus, Diogenes, &c., ought, perhaps, to be referred to him; but the more poetical, and, therefore, most probably the older, form, was Zenos in the genitive; and as Dios also meant heaven, the above names seem to be better explained as heaven-gift and heaven-born, leaving to Zeus only those that retain the same commencement.

Ζηνὼν, or, as it is commonly called, Zeno, was a good deal used in Greece throughout the classical times, and descending to Christian times, named a saint martyred under Gallienus, also a bishop of Verona, who left ninety-three sermons, at the beginning of the fourth century, and thus made it a canonical name, although the rules of the Church had forbidden christening children after heathen gods. Except for the Isaurian Emperor Zeno, and an occasional Russian Sinon, there has not, however, been much disposition to use the name.

Zenobios, life from Zeus, is by far the easiest way of explaining the name of the brilliant Queen of Palmyra; but, on the other hand, she was of Arabian birth, the daughter of Amrou, King of Arabia, and it is highly probable that she originally bore the true Arabic name of Zeenab (ornament of the father); and that when she and her husband entered on intercourse with the Romans, the name Zenobia was bestowed upon her as an equivalent, together with the genuine Latin Septima as a mark of citizenship. When her glory waned, and she was brought as a prisoner to Rome, she and her family were allowed to settle in Italy; and her daughters left descendants there. Zenobius, the Bishop of Milan, who succeeded St. Ambrose, bore her name, and claimed her blood; and thus Zenobio and Zenobia still linger among the inhabitants of the city.

The romance of her story caught the French fancy, and Zénobie has been rather in fashion among modern French damsels.

A Cilician brother and sister, called Zenobius and Zenobia, the former a physician and afterwards Bishop of Ægæ, were put to death together during the persecution of Diocletian, and thus became saints of the Eastern Church, making Sinovij, Sinovija, or for short, Zizi, very fashionable among the Russians.

It is much more difficult to account for the prevalence of Zenobia in Cornwall. Yet many parish registers show it as of an early date: and dear to the West is the story of a sturdy dame called Zenobia Brengwenna, (Mrs. Piozzi makes the surname Stevens,) who, on her ninety-ninth birthday, rode seventeen miles on a young colt to restore to the landlord a 99 years' lease that had been granted to her father, in her name, at her birth.

Probably Zenaïda means daughter of Zeus. Although not belonging to any patron saint, it is extensively popular among Russian ladies; and either from them, or from the modern Greek, the French have recently become fond of Zenaïde.^[25]

The name of the white-armed, ox-eyed queen of heaven, Ἡρα or Ἡρη (Hera or Heré), is derived by philologists from the same root as the familiar German herr and herrinn, and thus signifies the lady or mistress. Indeed the masculine form ἥρως, whence we take our hero, originally meant a free or noble man, just as herr does in ancient German, and came gradually to mean a person distinguished on any account, principally in arms; and thence it became technically applied to the noble ancestors who occupied an intermediate place between the gods and existing men. The Latin herus and hera are cognate, and never rose out of their plain original sense of master and mistress, though the heros was imported in his grander sense from the Greek, and has passed on to us.

It is curious that whereas the wife of Zeus was simply the lady, it was exactly the same with Frigga, who, as we shall by-and-by see, was merely the Frau—the free woman or lady.

Hera herself does not seem to have had many persons directly named after her, though there was plenty from the root of her name. The feminine Hero was probably thus derived,—belonging first to one of the Danaïdes, then to a daughter of Priam, then to the maiden whose light led Leander to his perilous breasting of the Hellespont, and from whom Shakespeare probably took it for the lady apparently “done to death by slanderous tongues.”

It is usual to explain as Ἡρα-κλῆς (fame of Hera) the name of the son of Zeus and Alcmena, whose bitterest foe Hera was, according to the current legends of Greece; but noble fame is a far more probable origin for Herakles, compound as he is of the oft-repeated Sun-myth mixed with the veritable Samson, and the horrible Phœnician Melkarth or Moloch, with whom the Tyrians themselves identified Herakles.

A few compounds, such as Heraclius, Heraclidas, Heracleonas, have been formed from Herakles, the hero ancestor of the Spartan kings, and therefore specially venerated in Lacedæmon. The Latins called the name Hercules; and it was revived in the Cinque-cento, in Italy, as Ercole. Thus Hercule was originally the baptismal name of Catherine de Medici’s youngest son; but he changed it to François at his confirmation, when hoping to mount a throne. Exceptionally, Hercules occurs in England; and we have known of more than one old villager called Arkles, respecting whom there was always a doubt whether he were Hercules or Archelaus.

Hence, too, the name of the father of history, Herodotus (noble gift); hence, likewise, that of Herodes. Some derive this last from the Arab hareth (a farmer); but it certainly was a Greek name long before the Idumean family raised themselves to the throne of Judea, since a poet was so called who lived about the time of Cyrus. If the Herods were real Edomites, they may have Græcized Hareth into Herodes; but it is further alleged that the first Herod, grandfather of the first king, was a slave, attached to the temple of Apollo at Ascalon, taken captive by Idumean robbers. Hateful as is the name in its associations, its feminine, Herodias, became doubly hateful as the murderess of John the Baptist.

Section IV.—Athene.

The noble goddess of wisdom, pure and thoughtful, armed against evil, and ever the protector of all that was thoughtfully brave and resolute, was called Αθήνη (Athene), too anciently for the etymology to be discernible, or even whether her city of Athens was called from her, or she from the city.

Many an ancient Greek was called in honour of her, but the only one of these names that has to any degree survived is Athenaïs.

There were some Cappadocian queens, so called; and so likewise was the daughter of a heathen philosopher in the fourth century, whom the able Princess Pulcheria selected as the wife of her brother Theodosius, altering her name, however, to Eudocia at her baptism.

It must have been the Scudery cycle of romance that occasioned Athenaïs to have been given to that Demoiselle de Mortémar, who was afterwards better known as Madame de Montespan.

Athenaios (Athenian), Athenagoras (assembly of Athene), Athenadgoros (gift of Athene), were all common among the Greeks.

Athene’s surname of Pallas is derived by Plato from πάλλειν, to brandish, because of her brandished spear; but it is more likely to be from πάλλαξ (a virgin), which would answer to her other surname of παρθένος, likewise a virgin, familiar to us for the sake of the most beautiful of all heathen remains, the Parthenon, as well as the ancient name of Naples, Parthenope. This, however, was a female name in Greece, and numerous instances of persons called Parthenios and Palladios attest the general devotion to this goddess, perhaps the grandest of all the imaginings of the Indo-European.

There is something absolutely satisfactory in seeing how much more the loftier and purer deities, Athene, Apollo, Artemis, reigned over Greek nomenclature than the embodiments of brute force and sensual pleasure, Ares and Aphrodite, both probably introductions from the passionate Asiatics, and as we see in Homer, entirely on the Trojan side. An occasional Aretas and Arete are the chief recorded namesakes of Ares, presiding god of the Areopagus as he was; and thence may have come the Italian Aretino, and an Areta, who appears in Cornwall. Aphrodite seems to have hardly one derived from her name, which is explained as the Foam Sprung.^[26]

Section V.—Apollo and Artemis.

The brother and sister deities, twin children of Zeus and Leto, are, with the exception of Athene, the purest and brightest creations of Greek mythology.

The sister’s name, Artemis, certainly meant the sound, whole, or vigorous; that of the brother, Apollōn, is not so certainly explained; though Æschylus considered it to come from ἀπόλλυμι, to destroy.

They both of them had many votaries in Greece; such names as Apollodorus (gift of Apollo), Apollonius, and the like, arising in plenty, but none of them have continued into Christian times, though Apollos was a companion of St. Paul. The sole exception is Apollonia, an Alexandrian maiden, whose martyrdom began by the extraction of all her teeth, thus establishing St. Apolline, as the French call her, as the favourite subject of invocation in the toothache. Abellona, the Danish form of this name, is a great favourite in Jutland and the isles, probably from some relic of the toothless maiden. The Slovaks use it as Polonija or Polona.

The votaries of Artemis did not leave a saint to perpetuate them; but Artemisia, the brave queen of Halicarnassus, had a name of sufficient stateliness to delight the précieuses. Thus Artémise was almost as useful in French romances as the still more magnificentmagnificent Artémidore, the French version of Artemidorus (gift of Artemis).

It was a late fancy of mythology, when all was becoming confused, that made Apollo and Artemis into the sun and moon deities, partly in consequence of their epithets Phœbus, Phœbe, from φάω (to shine). The original Phœbe seems to have belonged to some elder myth, for she is said to have been daughter of Heaven and Earth, and to have been the original owner of the Delphic oracle. Afterwards she was said to have been the mother of Leto (the obscure), and thus grandmother of Apollo and Artemis, who thence took their epithet. This was probably a myth of the alternation of light and darkness; but as we have received our notions of Greek mythology through the dull Roman medium, it is almost impossible to disentangle our idea of Phœbus from the sun, or of Phœbe from the crescent moon. In like manner the exclusively modern Greek φωτεινή (bright), Photinee, comes from φώς phos (light), as does Photius, used in Russia as Fotie.

Strangely enough, we find Phœbus among the mediæval Counts of Foix, who, on the French side of their little Pyrenean county were Gaston Phœbus; on the Spanish, Gastone Febo. Some say that Phœbus was originally a soubriquet applied to one of the family on account of his personal beauty, though it certainly was afterwards given at baptism; others, that it was an imitation of an old Basque name.

Phœbe was a good deal in use among the women of Greek birth in the early Roman empire; and “Phœbe, our sister,” the deaconessdeaconess of Cenchrea, is commended by St. Paul to the Romans; but she has had few namesakes, except in England; the Italian Febe only being used as a synonym for the moon.

Cynthia was a title belonging to Artemis, from Mount Cynthus, and has thence become a title of the moon, and a name of girls in America.

Delia, another title coming from Delos, the place of her nativity, has been preferred by the Arcadian taste, and flourished in shepherdess poems, so as to be occasionally used as a name in England, but more often as a contraction for Cordelia.

Delphinios and Delphinia were both of them epithets of Apollo and Artemis, of course from the shrine at Delphi. Some say that shrine and god were so called because the serpent Python was named Delphinè; others, that the epithet was derived from his having metamorphosed himself into a dolphin, or else ridden upon one, when showing the Cretan colonists the way to Delphi.

The meaning of Delphys adelphus is the womb; and thus the Greeks believed Delphi to be the centre of the earth, just as the mediæval Christians thought Jerusalem was. It is from this word that delphis (a brother) is derived, and from one no doubt of the same root, that was first a mass, and afterwards a dolphin, the similarity of sound accounting for the confusion of derivatives from the temple and the fish. Again, the dolphin is said to be so called as being the fish of the Dolphièm god.

It was probably as an attribute of the god that Delphinos was used as a name by the Greeks; and it makes its first appearance in Christian times in two regions under Greek influence, namely, Venice and Southern France, which latter place was much beholden for civilization to the Greek colony of Massilia. Dolfino has always prevailed in the Republic of St. Mark; and Delphinus was a sainted bishop of Bourdeaux, in the fourth century, from whom many, both male and female, took the name, which to them was connected with the fish of Jonah, the emblem of the Resurrection.

In 1125, Delfine, heiress of Albon, married Guiges, Count of Viennois. She was his third wife; and to distinguish her son from the rest of the family, he was either called or christened, Guiges Delphin, and assumed the dolphin as his badge, whence badge and title passed to his descendants, the Counts Dauphins de Viennois. The last of these left his country and title to Charles, son of King Jean of France; and thence the heir-apparent was called the Dauphin.

Dalphin appears at Cambrai before 1200; and Delphine de Glandèves, sharing the saintly honours of her husband, Count Elzéar de St. Sabran, became the patroness of the many young ladies in compliment to la dauphine.

It is startling to meet with ‘Dolphin’ as a daughter of the unfortunate Waltheof, Earl of Mercia; but unless her mother, Judith, imported the French Delphine, it is probable that it is a mistake for one of the many forms of the Frank, Adel, which was displacing its congener the native Æthel. Indeed, Dolfine, which is very common among German girls now, is avowedly the contraction of Adolfine, their feminine for Adolf (noble wolf).

Section VI.—Hele.

The sun-god who drove his flaming chariot around the heavenly vault day by day, and whose eye beheld everything throughout the earth, was in Homer’s time an entirely different personage from the “far darting Apollo,” with whom, thanks to the Romans, we confound him.

Helios was his name, a word from the root elé (light), the same that has furnished the Teutonic adjective hell (bright or clear), and that is met again in the Keltic heol (the sun).

This root ele (heat or light) is found again in the Greek name of the moon, Sēēlēnē once a separate goddess from Artemis. One of the Cleopatras was called Selene; but it does not appear that this was used again as a name till in the last century, when Selina was adopted in England, probably by mistake, for the French Céline, and belonged to the Wesleyan Countess of Huntingdon.

From ēlē again sprang the name most of all noted among Greeks, the fatal name of Ἑλένε, Helene, the feminine of Helenos (the light or bright), though Æschylus, playing on the word, made it ἑλένας (the ship-destroying).

A woman may be a proverb for any amount of evil or misfortune, but as long as she is also a proverb for beauty, her name will be copied, and Helena never died away in Greece, and latterly was copied by Roman ladies when they first became capable of a little variety.

At last it was borne by the lady who was the wife of Constantius Chlorus, the mother of Constantine, and the restorer of the shrines at Jerusalem. St. Helena, holding the true cross, was thenceforth revered by East and West. Bithynia on the one hand, Britain on the other, laid claim to have been her birth-place, and though it is unfortunately most likely that the former country is right, and that she can hardly be the daughter of “Old King Cole,” yet it is certain that the ancient Britons held her in high honour. Eglwys Ilan, the Church of Helen, still exists in Wales, and the insular Kelts have always made great use of her name. Ellin recurs in old Welsh pedigrees from the Empress’s time. Elayne is really the old Cambrian form occurring in registers from early times, and thus explaining the gentle lady Elayne, the mother of Sir Galahad, whom Tennyson has lately identified with his own spinning Lady of Shalott. Helen, unfortunately generally pronounced Ellen, was used from the first in Scotland; Eileen or Aileen in Ireland.

Nor are these Keltic Ellens the only offspring of the name. Elena in Italy, it assumed the form of Aliénor among the Romanesque populations of Provence, who, though speaking a Latin tongue, greatly altered and disguised the words. Indeed there are some who derive this name from έλεος (pity), but there is much greater reason to suppose it another variety of Helena, not more changed than many other Provençal names. Aliénor in the land of troubadours received all the homage that the Languedoc could pay, and one Aliénor at least was entirely spoilt by it, namely, she who was called Eléonore by the French king who had the misfortune to marry her, and who became in time on English lips our grim Eleanor of the dagger and the bowl, the hateful AquitainianAquitainian grandmother, who bandies words with Constance of Brittany in King John. Her daughter, a person of far different nature, carried her name to Castille, where, the language being always disposed to cut off a commencing e, she was known as Leonor, and left hosts of namesakes. Her descendant, the daughter of San Fernando, brought the name back to England, and, as our “good Queen Eleanor,” did much to redeem its honour, which the levity of her mother-in-law, the Provençal Aliénor of Henry III., had greatly prejudiced. Eleanor continued to be a royal name as long as the Plantagenets were on the throne, and thus was widely used among the nobility, and afterwards by all ranks, when of course it lost its proper spelling and was turned into Ellinor and Elinor, still, however, owning its place in song and story. Annora, frequent in Northern England, was the contraction of Eleanora, and was further contracted into Annot. Also Ellen was Lina, or Linot.

Meantime the Arragonese conquests in Italy had brought Leonora thither as a new name independent of Elena, and it took strong root there, still preserving its poetic fame in the person of the lovely Leonora d'Este, the object of Tasso’s hopeless affection. To France again it came with the Galigai, the Maréchale d'Ancre, the author of the famous saying about the power of a strong mind over a weak one; and unpopular as she was, Léonore has ever since been recognized in French nomenclature, and it went to Germany as Lenore.

The Greek Church was constant to the memory of the Empress, mother of the founder of Constantinople, and Helena has always been frequent there. And when the royal widow Olga came from Muscovy to seek instruction and baptism, she was called Helena, which has thus become one of the popular Russian names. It is sometimes supposed to be a translation of Olga, but this is a mistake founded on the fact that this lady, and another royal saint, were called by both names. Olga is, in fact, the feminine of Oleg (the Russian form of Helgi), which the race of Rurik had derived from their Norse ancestor, and it thus means holy.

Sweden also has a Saint Helene, who made a pilgrimage to Rome, and was put to death on her return by her cruel relations in 1160. Her relics were preserved in Zealand, near Copenhagen, making Ellin a favourite name among Danish damsels.

Helena has a perplexing double pronunciation in English, the central syllable being made long or short according to the tradition of the families where it is used. The Greek letter was certainly the short e, but it is believed that though the quantity of the syllable was short, the accent was upon it, and that the traditional sound of it survives in the name of the island which we learnt from the Portuguese.

Section VII.—Demeter.

Among the elder deities in whom the primitive notion of homage to the Giver of all Good was lost and dispersed, was the beneficent mother Demeter (Δημητήρ). Some derive the first syllable of this name from γῆ (the earth), others from the Cretan δήαι (barley), making it either earth mother, or barley mother; but the idea of motherhood is always an essential part of this bounteous goddess, the materializing of the productive power of the earth, “filling our hearts with food and gladness.”

Formerly Demeter had numerous votaries, especially among the Macedonians, who were the greatest name-spreaders among the Greeks, and used it in all the “four horns” of their divided empire. It occurs in the Acts, as the silversmith of Ephesus, who stirred up the tumult against St. Paul, and another Demetrius is commended by St. John. The Latin Church has no saint so called; but the Greek had a Cretan monk of the fourteenth century, who was a great ecclesiastical author; and a Demetrios, who is reckoned as the second great saint of Thessalonika. Hence Demetrios is one of the most popular of names in all the Eastern Church, and the countries that have ever been influenced by it; among whom must be reckoned the Venetian dominions which considered themselves to belong to the old Byzantine empire till they were able to stand alone. Dimitri has always been a great name in Russia. The Slavonian nations give it the contraction Mitar, and the feminine Dimitra or Mitra. The modern Greek contraction is Demos.

In some parts of Greece, Demeter was worshipped primarily as the gloomy winterly earth, latterly as the humanized goddess clad in black, in mourning for her daughter, whence she was adored as Melaina. Whether from this title of the goddess or simply a dark complexion, there arose the female name of Melania, which belonged to two Roman ladies, grandmother and granddaughter, who were among the many who were devoted to the monastic Saint Jerome, and derived an odour of sanctity from his record of their piety. Though not placed in the Roman calendar, they are considered as saints, and the French Mélanie and the old Cornish Melony are derived from them.

On the contrary, her summer epithet was Chloe, the verdant, as protectress of green fields, and Chloe seems to have been used by the Greeks, as a Corinthian woman so called is mentioned by St. Paul, and has furnished a few scriptural Chloes in England. In general, however, Chloe has been a property of pastoral poetry, and has thence descended to negroes and spaniels.^[27]

Section VIII.—Dionysos.

The god of wine and revelry appears to have been adopted into Greek worship at a later period than the higher divinities embodying loftier ideas. So wild and discordant are the legends respecting him, that it is probable that in the Bacchus, or Dionysos, whom the historical Greeks adored, several myths are united; the leading ones being, on the one hand, the naturalistic deity of the vine; on the other, some dimly remembered conqueror.

Dionysos has never been satisfactorily explained, though the most obvious conclusion is that it means the god of Nysa—a mountain where he was nursed by nymphs in a cave. Others make his mother Dione one of the original mythic ideas of a divine creature, the daughter of Heaven and Earth, and afterwards supposed to be the mother of Aphrodite.

Names given in honour of Dionysos were very common in Greece, and especially in the colony of Sicily, where Dion was also in use. Dionysios, the tyrant, seemed only to make the name more universally known, and most of the tales of tyranny clustered round him—such as the story of his ear, of the sword of Damocles, and the devotion of Damon and Pythias.

In the time of the Apostles, Dionysius was very frequent, and gave the name of the Areopagite mentioned by St. Paul, of several more early saints, and of a bishop who, in 272, was sent to convert the Gauls, and was martyred near Paris. The Abbey erected on the spot where he died was placed under the special protection of the Counts of Paris; and when they dethroned the sons of Charlemagne and became kings of France, St. Denys, as they called their saint, became the patron of the country; the banner of the convent, the Oriflamme, was unfurled in their national wars, and Mont joie St. Denys was their war-cry. St. Denys of France was invoked, together with St. Michael, in knighting their young men; and St. Denys of France was received as one of the Seven Champions of Christendom.

The Sicilians, having a certain confusion in their minds between the champion and the tyrant of Syracuse, have taken San Dionigi for their patron; he is also in high favour in Portugal as Diniz, and in Spain as Dionis. Denis is a very frequent Irish name, as a substitute for Donogh; and, to judge by the number of the surnames, Dennis, Denison, and Tennyson or Tenison, it would seem to have been more common in England than at present. The Russians have Dionissij; the Bohemians, Diwis; the Slavonians, Tennis; the Hungarians, Dienes. The feminine is the French Denise; English, Dionisia, Donnet, Dennet or Diot, which seem to have been at one time very common in England.^[28]

Section IX.—Hermes.

The origin is lost of the name of Hermes, the swift, eloquent, and cunning messenger of Zeus; but it is supposed to come from hĕra (the earth), and was called Hermas, Hermes, or Hermeias.

A long catalogue of Greeks might be given bearing names derived from him; and it was correctly that Shakespeare called his Athenian maiden Hermia.

Hermas is mentioned in the Epistle to the Romans, and is thought to be the same with the very early Christian author of the allegory of The Shepherd, but his name has not been followed.

Hermione was, in ancient legend, the wife of Cadmus, the founder of Thebes, and shared his metamorphosis into a serpent. Afterwards, another Hermione was the daughter of Helen and Menelaus, and, at first, wife of Neoptolemus, though afterwards of Orestes, the heroine of a tragedy of Euripides, where she appears in the unpleasant light of the jealous persecutor of the enslaved Andromache.

Hermione is generally supposed to be the same as the Italian Erminia and the French Hermine; but these are both remains of the Herminian gens, and are therefore Latin.

Hermocrates, Hermagoras, Hermogenes, every compound of this god’s name prevailed in Greece; but the only one that has passed on to Christianity is Hermolaos (people of Hermes), a name that gave a saint to the Greek Church, and is perpetuated in Russia as Ermolaï.^[29]

Descending from the greater deities of Olympus, we must touch upon the Muses, though not many instances occur of the use of their names. Μοῦσαι (Mousai), their collective title, is supposed to come from μάω (mao), to invent; it furnished the term mousikos, for songs and poetry, whence the Latin musa, musicus, and all the forms in modern language in which we speak of music and its professors.

Musidora (gift of the Muses) was one of the fashionable poetical soubriquets of the last century, and as such figures in Thomson’s Seasons.

As to the individual names, they have scarcely any owners except Polymnia, she of many hymns, whose modern representative, Polyhymnia, lies buried in a churchyard on Dartmoor, and startles us by her headstone. The West Indian negresses, sporting the titles of the ships of war, however, come out occasionally as Miss Calliope, Miss Euterpe, &c.

The only Muse who has left namesakes is hardly a fair specimen; for Urania (the heavenly), her epithet, as the presiding genius of astronomers, is itself formed from one of the pristine divinities of Greece, himself probably named from heaven itself, of which he was the personification. Οὐρανός (Ouranos), Uranus, is in Greek both the sky and the first father of all. The word is probably derived from the root or, which we find in ὄρος (a mountain), and ὄρνυμιὄρνυμι (to raise), just as our heaven comes from to heave.

Uranius was not uncommon among the later Greeks, especially in Christian names; a Gaulish author was so called, and it was left by the Romans as a legacy to the British. It makes its appearance among the Welsh as Urien, a somewhat common name at one time. “Brave Urien sleeps upon his craggy bed;” but Camden, or some one else before him, thought proper to identify it with George, which has led to its decay and oblivion.

Urania was revived in the days of euphuistic taste, when Sir Philip Sidney called himself Sidrophel, and the object of his admiration, Urania; it became a favourite poetic title both in England and France, and in process of time, a family name.

Θάλεια (Thaleia), though both Muse of Comedy, and one of the Three Graces, and signifying bloom, has not obtained any namesakes, though both her sister Graces have.

These nymphs were the multiplied personifications of Χάρις (Charis) grace, beauty, or charity. The Greeks were not unanimous as to the names or numbers of the Charites; the Athenians and Spartans adored only two, and the three usually recognized were defined by Hesiod. Thalia (bloom), Aglaia (brightness), Euphrosyne (mirth, cheerfulness, or festivity).

It has been almost exclusively by Greeks that the name has been borne; it was a great favourite among the Romaic Greeks, figuring again and again amongst the Porphyrogenitai, and to this present day it is common among the damsels of the Ionian Isles. I have seen it marked on a school-child’s sampler in its own Greek letters. In common life it is called Phroso. In Russia it is Jefronissa.

The other Grace, Aglaia, comes to light in Christian legend, as the name of a rich and abandoned lady at Rome, who, hearing of the value that was set on the relics of saints, fancied them as a kind of roc’s egg to complete the curiosities of her establishment, and sent Boniface, both her steward and her lover, to the East to procure some for her. He asked in jest whether, if his bones came home to her, she would accept them as relics; and she replied in the same spirit, little dreaming that at Tarsus he would indeed become a Christian and a martyr, and his bones be truly sent back to Rome, where Aglaia received them, became a penitent, took the veil, and earned the saintly honours that have ever since been paid to her. It is unfortunate for the credibility of this story that the date assigned to it is between 209 and 305, a wide space indeed, but one in which relic worship had not begun, and even if it had, the bones of martyrs must have been only too plentiful much nearer home. However, the French have taken up the name of Aglaë, and make great use of it.

A few ancient Greeks had names compounded of Charis, such as Charinus, and Charilaus, the nephew of Lycurgus; but it was reserved for Christianity to give the word its higher sense. Charis, through the Latin caritas, grew to be the Christian’s Charity, the highest of the three Graces: Faith, Hope, Love, that had taken the place of Bloom, Mirth, and Brightness. And thus it was that, after the Reformation, Charity, contracted into Cherry, became an English Christian name, perhaps in remembrance of the fair and goodly Charity of the House Beautiful, herself a reflex of the lovely and motherly Charissa, to whom Una conducted the Red Cross Knight. Chariton, Kharitoon, in Russian, is a name in the Greek Church, from a confessor of Sirmium, who under Aurelius was flogged with ox-hides and imprisoned, but was liberated on the Emperor’s death, and made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Perhaps this is the place, among these minor mythological personages, to mention that Zephyr (the West wind) has absolutely a whole family of name-children in France, where Zephirine has been greatly the fashion of late years.^[30]