Mermaid names: etymology and curiosities.

Let’s start by listing all the names of mermaids, which are not many in reality, and then we will analyze their respective etymologies, legends and some curiosities:

Aglaope
Aglaophonus
Leukosia
Ligeia
Molpe
Parthenope
Peisinoe
Pisinoe
Raidne
Teles
Telxiepia (“the one with intense words”] Thelxiope
Thelxinoe
Thelxipea

The word Mermaid comes from the Greek seirén (Σειρήν), which literally means “chained.” However, this etymology is questionable, since to arrive at it it is necessary to relate the word seirén with the Greek word seira, which means “chain”, “binding”, when in reality the origin of the word Mermaid does not seem to come from the Greek, but from older Mediterranean cultures

In Greek myths, Sirens do not have the shape that we usually attribute to them. Firstly, they do not have any marine features; on the contrary, they are usually represented as women with the body of a bird, and their function seems to have been to transport the spirits of the dead. The fish tail was integrated much later, and none of the classic Mermaid names mention this attribute.

That is to say that, originally, the Sirens were beings with the body of a bird, and only the face, and sometimes the torso, were that of a woman. But its most predominant feature, the voice, is present in the oldest myths. The Sirens were distinguished by having a musical, hypnotic voice, with which they attracted sailors to their small island off Sorrento, in the Mediterranean.

Although our list of Mermaid names seems too small, the truth is that the number of these creatures was even smaller in classical myths. So much so that the names of the mermaids, and their number, are variable, but they do not exceed a dozen.

The most common thing, however, is to consider that the Sirens are only three, which were permanently linked, or “tied” to certain marine reefs. From there the Sirens attracted sailors with their irresistible song, causing their ships to run aground and then devouring them. The myth presents a paradox, since it states that no one could hear the song of the Sirens without being attracted to them and being devoured, which means that no one knows exactly if their song was in fact beautiful.

The oldest function of the Sirens was to transport the souls of the dead to Hades. That is, they were apotropaic creatures that guarded the entrance to the underworld. The Greeks, however, attributed to them the typical characteristics of their female monstrosities, such as the Harpies, the Grayas and the Gorgons; which are beings whose danger is based more on cunning and deception than on brute force.

A more subtle look would say that his monstrosity in the eyes of the Greeks lies in the latter, in the fact that he is male and lacks intelligence.

The Greek hero is usually able to defeat any type of monstrosity, but in the case of the female monster he often required the advice of another woman to defeat it. In this context, the Sirens have been defeated very rarely in myths. In fact, they were only defeated twice; one for Orpheus, another for Odysseus

It was only in the Middle Ages when Mermaids were confused with other female creatures from Greek myths, such as Nereids, Naiads and Nymphs, thus acquiring the half-woman, half-fish appearance that currently characterizes them. We do not know exactly when they lost their wings, nor when their rather harsh character became seductive. The medieval image of a beautiful Siren sunbathing on a rock would have been strange to the Greeks, who represented her lairs as covered in bone remains, macabre remains of the banquets that the Sirens gave with the bodies exposed by shipwrecks.

It is likely that so few Siren names have survived because they were so well known in the ancient world that writers did not even bother to mention them directly. Everyone knew them perfectly. Euripides, one of the few who dares to give us a couple of names of Sirens, usually refers to them with the epithet “young virgins” (παρθηνικοι κοραι), thus identifying them with the Blessed Islands commented on by Plato.

In addition to having very few Mermaid names, their origin and number are also uncertain. Some myths claim that the Sirens are daughters of Achelous or Phorcys, or of the muses Tepsichore, Melpomene and Sterope. Their number is imprecise, and varies between two and five; or between three and twelve. Furthermore, in no myth is it mentioned that they are a race in themselves, so they could not reproduce.

The names of mermaids are scarce in myths, and very few of them are preserved in their original form. Among them are Agláope (“she with a beautiful face”), Telxiepia (“she with intense words”), Telxínoe (“joy of the heart”), Pisínoe (“the persuasive one”), Partenope (“fragrance of a virgin”), Leucosía (“the pure one”), Molpe (“the muse”), Radne (“improvement”), Teles (“the unbeatable one”) and Ligeia (“the clear-voiced one”), a name used by Edgar Allan Poe in one of his best stories: Ligeia (Ligeia).

The only thing certain about the Sirens is the aura of melancholy and danger, of sadness and fascination that surrounds them. It is said that they lost their feathers due to the fury of Demeter, outraged after learning that the Sirens witnessed Persephone’s abduction without helping her. Other equally unpleasant fates announce that the Sirens were punished for losing a competition against the Muses; and that when Jason and the Argonauts passed by his island, the prodigious Orpheus silenced his voices with the art of his lyre. Later, Odysseus, poetically more cruel, had himself tied to the mast of his ship to listen to the song of the Sirens, but he refrained from commenting anything about it.

Most myths agree that the Sirens committed suicide after Odysseus defeated them. Some speak of a prophecy, which said that if anyone listened to his Song and lived, the Sirens would perish in their place. However, this legend ignores the fact that Butes had already heard the Siren Song a generation before Odysseus, and that he survived. At this point we can think that the Sirens engineered his suicide, making Odysseus believe that he had won, because some time later, according to some authors, Telemachus, the hero’s son, was murdered by the Sirens when they discovered who his father was.

Mythology. I Mythological beings.

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