Myth & LegendGreek → English
Hyperion
/haɪˈpɪəriən/noun
A Titan of Greek myth, father of the sun, and the name of a moon of Saturn.
The Greek roots
ὑπέρ
hypér
over, above
ἰών
iṓn
going
Literally: “the one going above”
The story of the word
Homer uses Ὑπερίων as an epithet of the sun itself before it settles into a separate Titan, the father of Helios, Selene and Eos. Astronomers attached the name to a battered moon of Saturn found in 1848 by the Bonds and William Lassell within days of each other. It is the largest known irregularly shaped moon and tumbles chaotically, so its day has no fixed length. Keats began a poem called Hyperion twice and abandoned it twice.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1848
Same family
hyperbolehypertensionhyperactiveIapetus
In a sentence
Voyager 2 caught Hyperion looking like a sponge, pitted with deep craters.