Name Rants

[tallemaja]

Disclaimer: Wordy rant that no one else likely cares about, but I need to get off my chest anyway

I will neeeever not be salty about the way Greek names were Latinized! Half of them sound entirely different from the original. And I dislike the equation of Latinized forms of Greek names with, well… Greek names. No Greek has ever really been named [name_m]Lysander[/name_m] or [name_f]Eurydice[/name_f], [name_m]Alexander[/name_m] or [name_f]Hero[/name_f].

And it’s a shame, because many of the original forms are beautiful. I wish the Latinized & [name_f]English[/name_f] forms could exist without overshadowing the originals to the extent that they do (e.g., I feel like most people don’t even know that, for instance, [name_m]Apollo[/name_m] is not the original, authentic Greek name). [name_f]Hero[/name_f] is cute. I like that it exists as an international variant! But I wish that it was clearer that [name_f]Iro[/name_f] is the Greek form of the name (or that [name_f]Hero[/name_f] can be pronounced like Iro).

And I don’t expect [name_f]English[/name_f] speakers to pronounce names like [name_f]Athena[/name_f] or [name_m]Jason[/name_m] the way we do. Their [name_f]English[/name_f] pronunciations are very well-established and common. But I think it would be nice, on websites like nameberry where we spend so much time thinking about names, talking about names, researching names, if, when it comes to rare, not well-established internationally Greek names, there was an attempt at understanding the “correct” pronunciation. [name_m]Even[/name_m] if, in the end, you choose to use an Anglicised one! Which would be perfectly valid.

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Not entirely unrelated, but kind of: I really dislike the [name_f]English[/name_f] pronunciation of [name_f]Athena[/name_f]. I understand that it’s popular and have no issue with people pronouncing it that way, I just find it really unattractive It sounds the same as our word for “Athens” so I imagine that an [name_f]Athena[/name_f] travelling to Greece would get some funny looks!

[winterlyricalfox]

Not a rant, but if you had the time / energy / will I would love to see some of these names’ original versions!! I would love to be more educated about them (and give some lovely names their due!!)

[tallemaja]

Of course!! I’ll just do some random ones that come to mind then (:

A little disclaimer about spelling

It’s kind of complicated when it comes to spelling, because for example, Hera used to be considered the “correct” transliteration of Ήρα, even if it isn’t anymore. However, the pronunciations have always been the same (mostly… some names sounded a bit different in ancient Greek, but still closer to their modern Greek form than their Latin form). I’m going to use the modern Greek spellings because they usually better reflect the pronunciation, but the classic spellings are also valid when it comes to ancient names!

I should break some general small differences into categories!

1. There are no H names. Kind of. But basically, if an ancient Greek name starts with H… No it doesn’t Pronunciation wise at least! E.g., Hera is EE-rah (Ira), Hermes is ehr-MEES (Ermis) and like I mentioned, Hero is ee-RO (Iro). You don’t say the “H” in modern Greek or in many classical Greek dialects, barring the Attic.

2. There is no -er! Evander is Evandros, Alexander is Alexandros, Lysander is Lysandros… which reminds me!

3. There is no "Y pronounced like “eye”. Lysandros is LEE-sandros / LÜ-sandros and Pythagoras is PEE-thagoras/PÜ-thagoras. The musical instrument “lyra” (lyre) that the constellation Lyra was named after is pronounced LEE-rah / LÜ-rah.

4. There are no -us endings. Those are all Latin! The originals are usually -os, e.g., Dionysus is Dionysos, Telemachus is Telemachos, Patroclus is Patroclos. They can also be -as, e.g. Perseus is Perseas, Theseus is Theseas.

5. There is no “eu pronounced like you”. Eulalia is pronounced ehv-lah-LEE-ah in modern Greek. We would spell the name Evlalia. “Eu” can also make an “ef” sound, e.g., Euphemia would be written Effimia. In old ancient Greek (before 300 bc) “Eu” would have made an eh-ü sound.

6. “I” is always pronounced “ee”. Iris is EE-rees, Aphrodite is ah-fro-DHEE-tee. Calliope is kah-LYO-pee

An example that combines multiple rules: In Greek, Hyacinthus (also anglicised as Hyacinth) would be pronounced Iakinthos (ee-AH-keen-thos), because the H is often silent, the “y” is not pronounced “eye”, and the -us is actually an -os.

Some Latinised Greek names & the Greek form of them!

Apollo → Apollon
Jason → Iason
Hestia → Estia
Helen → Eleni
Achilles → Achilleas
Niobe → Niovi
Aristotle → Aristotelis
Agatha → Agathi / Agathe
Berenice → Vereniki
Alcyone → Alkyoni
Olympia → Still Olympia… but pronounced Olybia!!
Demeter → Dimitra
Eugenia → Evgenia, pronounced Evyenia
Hecuba / Hekabe → Ekavi
Hecate - Ekati
Circe → Kirki
Cybele → Kyveli
Atalanta → Atalanti / Atalante
Sappho → Sapfo
Urania → Ourania (ooh-rah-NEE-ah)
Lilaea → Lilaia / Lilea
Jocasta → Iokasti / Iokaste
Euphrosyne → Effrosyni / Effrosyne
Eurydice → Evrydiki / Evrydike
Orpheus → Orfeas
Homer → Omiros
Euclid → Efklidis

I’m sure there are more, but I’m running out of brain power now I hope these are good enough examples!

Made some edits according to my latest post in the thread

[NameSearchAccount]

This is true for a number of the examples you gave, but I especially really prefer Evlalia, Effemia, Estia, and the correct pronunciation of Calliope to the Anglicized versions.

[may.rose]

@tallemaja

ehv-lah-LEE-ah

Stop that is so much prettier than any other pronunciation of [name_f]Eulalia[/name_f]

Thank you for this fascinating read!!!

[Rosebeth]

I don’t claim to know much about Greek or Greek names, but I just wanted to say I always feel a slight frustration when trying to explain to people that our son’s name is NOT pronounced en-DIH-mee-un In an English speaking context anyway, people where we live tend to pronounce it more or less accurately, or after we correct them once.

And I feel the same about the Nordic / Old Norse / Scandinavian names in the database. A good example is Bjorn. There’s no such name as Bjorn in any Nordic or Scandinavian language, it simply doesn’t exist. There’s Björn and Bjørn and Bjarne and a bunch of other variants, and none of them is pronounced “byorn”. This really irks me sometimes.

[tallemaja]

@Rosebeth

pronounced en-DIH-mee-un

I have to admit, that’s how I assumed your family pronounced his name! How do you say it?

@Rosebeth

no such name as Bjorn in any Nordic or Scandinavian language,

I think it makes some sense to include accent-less entries (since the names would most likely have to be spelt like that if used in the US, where characters like ö aren’t accepted). That said… I really wish they’d make it clear in the entries’ descriptions that this spelling is anglicised and not the original, because I did think Bjorn was the correct spelling/pronunciation for many years! It’s also frustrating when a name only has an anglicised, accentless entry and not the original! I try to suggest the correct spellings in the “names we missed” thread when I notice them missing

[heartwings]

I believe that many of these Latinised versions are not Latinised but the Ancient Greek forms of them. Euphrosyne indeed is written like that in Ancient Greek. Apollon did not change
Elena was “Helene” and Niobe indeed was Niobe, etc

[tallemaja]

Not exactly.

Like I said, Ancient Greek pronunciation is complicated. The Erasmic reconstruction is the most popular abroad, but even that contains (proven) mistakes and in the end we 1) don’t know exactly how the language was pronounced, 2) pronunciations varied from region to region and time to time.

A lot of the changes in pronunciation (but not all of them) happened with the emergence of Koine Greek. Koine Greek emerged at around 300 BC and became more popular in the coming years. It’s important to know that we were still not Christians then. Christianity started to catch on eventually, but even until the 9th century A.D. some of us were still worshipping the same gods (we don’t know exactly when it stopped being a major religion, but it definitely was still one in mid-300 A.D.) That is to say, after the language had already evolved. So there are many pronunciations for these religious/mythological names that can all be considered “correct”!

So, to tackle your examples: For one, Euphrosyne could not have been “written like that in Ancient Greek” since Ancient Greek does not use the Latin alphabet. The name was written Εὐφροσύνη. How you pronounce it is complicated for all the reasons I explained. In the original Ionic-Attic dialect it would’ve been eh-iou-fro-see-nee (which is hard to explain! Latin did not have a letter that represented that υ sound accurately). However “ευ” had already been transformed to something closer to its modern form by 300 B.C. (not the same as the modern sound, something in-between the older form and the modern one). So the name has 3 Greek pronunciations all of which would be correct, but it was certainly never pronounced “you-phrosyne”.

As for Apollon, it has always had an -n at the end (in the nominative case). Not sure where you’re coming from with that.

Helene is, again, complicated. What we’re talking about is the presence of “rough breathing” in Ancient Greek, which is often misunderstood. Rough breathing was present in the Attic dialect, but it did not exist in the Aeolic dialect (most well-known for Sappho’s works) or the more famous Ionic dialect. The original Ionic dialect did originally have rough breathing, but it underwent psilosis (the loss of the “H” sound) very early on. It’s believed that by the time that writers like Homer, Hesiod and Herodotus created their works, their dialects would have been psilotic (not had the H sound). The Latin alphabet forms of these names were based on the Attic dialect. However, when we speak of Helen of Troy, it makes sense to imagine her name the way Homer most likely pronounced it – without the “H”.

For the other H names I mentioned (Hera, Hermes, etc.) I will amend my original comment to say that the H pronunciation can be valid. It’s just not one that I prefer, since pronunciations without the H are equally valid/classical and have been used for thousands of years, also reflecting the modern Greek pronunciation. I should have made that clearer!

As for Niobe, you’re correct that it would have been pronounced with a B sound for quite a while – until at least the 1st century. Niove is still valid as an Ancient Greek pronunciation, since, as I mentioned, the worship of the gods didn’t end then, but I do agree that the “b” pronunciation is perhaps more “classical”.

[heartwings]

(For Apollon) Oh I know! In fact I said that Apollon is the correct version. I read Euphrosyne as eh-oo-fro-see-neh myself (i am not from an english speaking country), i might be biased for that. Sorry if I said something wrong, we learn Ancient Greek in the schools here but I might have confused something

[Rosebeth]

@tallemaja

How do you say it?

We say en-duh-MEE-on (although the second syllable sometimes sounds more like “dih” in my accent)

@tallemaja

I think it makes some sense to include accent-less entries

I know that [name_m]Bjorn[/name_m] exists as a name in the sense that people have definitely used it, either because they couldn’t use the accents in their country or just out of ignorance / ease. But there should be more information about the original in the entry (for this one and several other names).

[tallemaja]

I’m absolutely mortified, I only just realised people are using [name_f]Avalon[/name_f] as in, the [name_f]Avalon[/name_f] from Arthurian legend, and not the [name_f]Avalon[/name_f] Peninsula in Newfoundland, [name_f]Canada[/name_f] I feel like I used to know about the mythical connection at some point but then I fully forgot about it !!

[may.rose]

I’m realizing that I really love the sound and vibe of the name Oscar… but I just strongly dislike the way it looks written down. (Oskar is better, but still pretty harsh looking.) I feel like in my head it should be spelled more similarly to [name_m]August[/name_m].

[sammaegre]

One of the things I get picky about with sibsets is all the names having similar lengths/amount of nickname options which is now becoming a problem because [name_f]Lucy[/name_f], just [name_f]Lucy[/name_f], is my current #1 and the entire rest of my current top 25 for girls that I just posted are all long names with tons of nicknames so making sister sets for [name_f]Lucy[/name_f] is going terribly, none of my other top favorites work! Luckily, my boy’s list is more variable in length so that’s not quite as bad but at least 90% of my girl’s list is long with nicknames.

[bemiranda]

Wish you could block folks on here! If you can, I sure wish I knew how it works

[tallemaja]

You can go on someone’s profile, click on “Normal” and select “Ignored” if you wish to! It’s not exactly the same as blocking but I believe it’s the closest you can get to on the forums, unfortunately.

[bemiranda]

Thank you!

[EpitomeofGrace]

OMG I have the same issue but with the letter N!

[fallacia]

I just now figured out today after hearing it said aloud that [name_f]Celeste[/name_f] is pronounced “seh-lest” and not “seh-les-tee.” It sounds so wrong now… I thought it was such a pretty feminine name but it sounds so boring to me now.

[baya44]

I know multiple Celestes who pronounce it seh-les-tay, if that’s any comfort!