Your name is your destiny, at least so they thought in some cultures, ancient Greece among them. For them a name wasn’t just euphonics; it didn’t just have to “sound nice,” or honor Grampa or some other friend or relative. Names could point to a role model or invoke a social value. Then as now names could covey parental expectations and thereby exert a powerful influence on the shaping of personality. Sometimes, however, there were unexpected consequences.
Naming can be a slippery business, because names can wiggle out of restraints that apply to other speech acts. Consider the name Hippolytus, for example, or its female equivalent, Hippolyta. These are fine sounding names, whose first component hints that the family must have enough money to keep horses and thereby be part of the horsy set, or other high-status circles. You can see that mind set at work in Aristophanes’ Clouds when Strepsiades and his wife argue about naming their son. and compromise on Pheidippides, joining together a word for tightfistedness with one for horse. Or consider a woman whose name evokes a horse with a tawny coat, Xanthippe. Her family’s values are clear; she didn’t have to scold her ne’r-do-well husband about wealth and status; her name sent that message to Socrates loud and clear.
Names with -hipp- in them, however, can go one step beyond the prestigious ownership of horses . They can evoke the cavalry, the hippeis. Archippus and Hipparchus both conveyed the goal of commanding cavalry – a patriotic ambition set for the child so named.
But what about the second half of the names Hippolytus and Hippolyta? Now the parents envision not just horse ownership, or cavalry command for their baby boy or girl,, but a specific moment in a battle, when the command is given releasing a cavalry ore that has been restrained from attacking an enemy until the moment is just right. That moment is also in view in a more general way in names such as
Lysimachus. A daughter can be named that way, too: Lysimache turns up both in myth and in real life.
Then there’s poor Lysippus. His name is probably a sign that the parents wanted their child to grow up to be a commander who tells his cavalry when to charge. But what happened? Did the young Lysippus rebel against his parents’ aspiration for him so he could become one of the most famous sculptors of Greece? I hope his parents were not too disappointed.
Sometimes ambiguity is waiting in the wings of Greek nomenclature. The name of the character who gives her name to Aristophanes’ sex-strike comedy, Lysistrata, sounds militaristic. But she is not someone who gives an army the order to charge, but someone who realizes the futility of war, and concocts a plan that will release, in another sense, the armies of Greece . The sex-strike she plans will demobilize them, once the belligerents come to their senses.
A similar ambiguity in a name shapes Euripides’ play Hippolytus, produced some years before the Lysistrata and a tragedy not a comedy. .In it the “release” part f the name turns from active to passive. (Names don’t have to signal their grammatical mood.) Hippolytus is undone when his horses panic and overturn his chariot. It’s a devastating ending for the expectations of his parents, king Theseus of Athens and, (probably) the Amazon queen Hippolyta.
His name was their destiny.
Naming can be a slippery business, because names can wiggle out of restraints that apply to other speech acts. Consider the name Hippolytus, for example, or its female equivalent, Hippolyta. These are fine sounding names, whose first component hints that the family must have enough money to keep horses and thereby be part of the horsy set, or other high-status circles. You can see that mind set at work in Aristophanes’ Clouds when Strepsiades and his wife argue about naming their son. and compromise on Pheidippides, joining together a word for tightfistedness with one for horse. Or consider a woman whose name evokes a horse with a tawny coat, Xanthippe. Her family’s values are clear; she didn’t have to scold her ne’r-do-well husband about wealth and status; her name sent that message to Socrates loud and clear.
Names with -hipp- in them, however, can go one step beyond the prestigious ownership of horses . They can evoke the cavalry, the hippeis. Archippus and Hipparchus both conveyed the goal of commanding cavalry – a patriotic ambition set for the child so named.
But what about the second half of the names Hippolytus and Hippolyta? Now the parents envision not just horse ownership, or cavalry command for their baby boy or girl,, but a specific moment in a battle, when the command is given releasing a cavalry ore that has been restrained from attacking an enemy until the moment is just right. That moment is also in view in a more general way in names such as
Lysimachus. A daughter can be named that way, too: Lysimache turns up both in myth and in real life.
Then there’s poor Lysippus. His name is probably a sign that the parents wanted their child to grow up to be a commander who tells his cavalry when to charge. But what happened? Did the young Lysippus rebel against his parents’ aspiration for him so he could become one of the most famous sculptors of Greece? I hope his parents were not too disappointed.
Sometimes ambiguity is waiting in the wings of Greek nomenclature. The name of the character who gives her name to Aristophanes’ sex-strike comedy, Lysistrata, sounds militaristic. But she is not someone who gives an army the order to charge, but someone who realizes the futility of war, and concocts a plan that will release, in another sense, the armies of Greece . The sex-strike she plans will demobilize them, once the belligerents come to their senses.
A similar ambiguity in a name shapes Euripides’ play Hippolytus, produced some years before the Lysistrata and a tragedy not a comedy. .In it the “release” part f the name turns from active to passive. (Names don’t have to signal their grammatical mood.) Hippolytus is undone when his horses panic and overturn his chariot. It’s a devastating ending for the expectations of his parents, king Theseus of Athens and, (probably) the Amazon queen Hippolyta.
His name was their destiny.