Everyday LifeGreek → English
Leander
/liˈændər/proper noun
A male given name, carried in myth by the youth who swam the Hellespont each night to reach Hero.
The Greek roots
λέων
léōn
lion
ἀνήρ
anḗr
man
Literally: “lion man”
The story of the word
Musaeus wrote the story up around the fifth century AD and Marlowe left his English version unfinished when he was killed in 1593. Byron swam the Hellespont in May 1810 to prove the crossing possible and mentioned it more often afterwards than he mentioned his own poems. The lion in the first half also sits inside Leonidas and, by a longer road, Leonard.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
Same family
LeonidaschameleonAlexanderpolyandry
In a sentence
They called the boy Leander and shortened it to Lee within a week.