Friday 1 April 2011

A Byzantine name for a modern child?

 
This is not very big news but I thought quite an interesting one. Mylene Klass former pop-band singer and recently a ''Talking Movies'' presenter decided to call her newborn daughter Hero. I found it strange but apparently Hero and Leander is a Byzantine myth, relating the story of Hērō (GreekἩρώ, pron. hay-RAW (ancient) and like "hero" in English), a priestess of Aphrodite who dwelt in a tower in Sestos on the European side of the Dardanelles, and Leander (GreekΛέανδρος, Léandros), a young man from Abydos on the opposite side of the strait. Leander fell in love with Hero and would swim every night across the Hellespont to be with her. Hero would light a lamp at the top of her tower to guide his way.

Succumbing to Leander's soft words, and to his argument that Aphrodite, as goddess of love, would scorn the worship of a virgin, Hero allowed him to make love to her. This routine lasted through the warm summer. But one stormy winter night, the waves tossed Leander in the sea and the breezes blew out Hero's light, and Leander lost his way, and was drowned. Hero threw herself from the tower in grief and died as well. (taken from Wikipedia).
For some time I thought that Leander's Tower is Kızkulesi in Istanbul, but is it really or is it just a marketing trick to lure more tourists?