Myth & LegendGreek → English
Selene
/səˈliːni/proper noun
The Greek moon-goddess, and a given name taken from her.
The Greek roots
Σελήνη
Selḗnē
moon, moon-goddess
σέλας
sélas
brightness, gleam
Literally: “the shining one”
The story of the word
The name is built on σέλας, brightness, so it says shining rather than moon. Hesiod makes her sister to Helios the sun and Eos the dawn, the three lights of the sky born together. Her best-known story is Endymion, the shepherd she kept in permanent sleep so she could come to him every night, which the Greeks told as tenderness and later poets found harder to read that way.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
Same family
seleniumseleniteselenology
In a sentence
They named the daughter Selene and the son Helios, which the grandparents found excessive.