Persephone

I'm quite fond of the name. I would love if our (future) daughter could have that as her name. We could shorten it, as parents often do, to Percy. I think it's a cute name. My wife absolutely hates it and refuses to even consider it... so perhaps my dream will never come true... but here's a brief history of the name Persephone...

Here's a picture of her... Pretty huh?



She's holding a pomegranate.


In Greek mythology, Persephone was the embodiment of the Earth's fertility at the same time that she was the Queen of the Underworld.

Her story has great emotional power: an innocent maiden, a mother's grief at the abduction, and joy at the return of her daughter. It is also cited frequently as a paradigm of myths that explain natural processes, with the descent and return of the goddess bringing about the change of seasons.

The Homeric form of her name is Persephoneia. In other dialects she was known under various other names: Persephassa, Persephatta, or simply Kore. Plato calls her Pherepapha in his Cratylus, "because she is wise and touches that which is in motion."

The Romans first heard of her from the Aeolian and Dorian cities of Magna Graecia, who used the dialectal variant Proserpina. Hence, in Roman mythology she was called Proserpina, and as a revived Roman Proserpina, she became an emblematic figure of the Renaissance. At Locri, perhaps uniquely, Persephone was the protectress of marriage, a role usually assumed by Hera; in the iconography of votive plaques at Locri, her abduction and marriage by Hades serve as an emblem of the marital state; children at Locri were dedicated to Proserpina, and maidens about to be wed brought her their peplos (Greek garments of the time.) to be blessed.

Persephone lived a peaceful life before she became the goddess of the underworld, which, according to Olympian mythographers, did not occur until Hades abducted her and brought her into the underworld. She was innocently picking flowers with some nymphs, Athena, and Artemis, in a field in Enna when Hades came to abduct her, bursting up through a cleft in the earth. The nymphs were changed by Demeter into the Sirens for not having interfered. Life came to a standstill as the devastated Demeter, goddess of the Earth, searched everywhere for her lost daughter. Helios, the sun, who sees everything, eventually told her what had happened.

Finally, Zeus, pressured by the cries of the hungry people and by the other deities who also heard their anguish, could not put up with the dying earth and forced Hades to return Persephone. But before she was released to Hermes, who had been sent to retrieve her, Hades tricked her into eating three pomegranate seeds, which forced her to return to the underworld for a season each year. When Demeter and her daughter were united, the Earth flourished with vegetation and color, but for four months each year, when Persephone returned to the underworld, the earth once again became a barren realm. This is an origin story to explain the seasons.

This myth also can be interpreted as an allegory of ancient Greek marriage rituals. The Classical Greeks felt that marriage was a sort of abduction of the bride by the groom from the bride's family, and this myth may have explained the origins of the marriage ritual. The more popular etiological explanation of the seasons may have been a later interpretation.

The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica account of the myth.

"As she was gathering flowers with her playmates in a meadow, the earth opened and Pluto, god of the dead, appeared and carried her off to be his queen in the world below. ... Torch in hand, her sorrowing mother sought her through the wide world, and finding her not she forbade the earth to put forth its increase. So all that year not a blade of corn grew on the earth, and men would have died of hunger if Zeus had not persuaded Pluto to let Persephone go. But before he let her go Pluto made her eat the seed of a pomegranate, and thus she could not stay away from him for ever. So it was arranged that she should spend two-thirds (according to later authors, one-half) of every year with her mother and the heavenly gods, and should pass the rest of the year with Pluto beneath the earth. ... As wife of Pluto, she sent spectres, ruled the ghosts, and carried into effect the curses of men."

More can be found here....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persephone



Perhaps my wife will change her mind. But not very likely... oh well... I can make a character in my novel and give her that name.

-Jeff