Religious and Mythological Theme Naming

Naming characters or things after mythological and religious figures to make some significant connection between the two.

There's nothing particularly odd about women named Diana, Phoebe, or Cynthia. However, if you see a trio with those names, pay attention — all three names come from Greek mythology, so if you see a group like this, there's probably some Shout-Out Theme Naming going on (and as all those names can be applied to the same goddess, you might be in for some real fun). Likewise, a group of men named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all gathered together indicates that they will probably end up doing something important (especially if they have a friend named Jesse or Joshua). If the names fail to make good on their symbolic connotation, it's Squat's in a Name.

Most cases of themed names from religion and mythology aren't so subtle, and will throw around names like Ra, Horus, and Sakhmet with reckless abandon. In some cases, there will be separate groups with their own themes, so you might end up with one group named after Celtic gods and another named after Native American spirits.

See also Names To Run Away From: Religious Names. Subtrope to Shout-Out Theme Naming, which is itself a subtrope of Theme Naming.

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Examples:

• Harry Potter

Anime & Manga

• Ah! My Goddess: The goddesses Belldandy, Urd, and Skuld are named after the three Norns of Norse Mythology, Verdandi, Urd and Skuld.
• Many characters in Appleseed had their names taken straight from the Greek Mythology, starting with Briareos Hecatonchires and Athena...
• Attack on Titan:
  • Ymir is named after a primeval being in Norse Mythology who is the progenitor of all jötnar (giants). Fitting because she's named In-Universe after Ymir Fritz, the progenitor of all Titans ("giants" in the original Japanese) and possessed the power of the Founding Titan. This gives her more in common with the Myth.
  • The Castle Utgard is named after the Norse jotun Utgard-Loki who lives in a massive illusory castle
• Berserk: The names and concepts used by Daiba and the Kushan belong to Hinduism. Kundalini is a kind of serpentine feminine energy all humans have located at the base of the spine, daka is the male form of a kind of ferocious spirits, pishacha are ravenous demons or vampires with shapeshifting powers, and makara is a legendary sea creature that serves as the vehicle of the water god Varuna.
  • Rakshas, who is of Kushan origin, derives his name from the shapeshifting demons commonly depicted as antagonists in Hindu texts.
  • The incantation Schierke uses to summon the Four Kings comes from the Kabbalistic Cross, the first part of the lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram. It is commonly spelled as "Ateh Malkuth Ve-Geburah, Ve-Gedulah, Le-olam" ("For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever"). The third part of the ritual deals with invoking the four elements and the presence of the archangels Raphael, Gabriel, Michael and Uriel, each guarding a cardinal point.
• Betrayal Knows My Name has a Spell Book called the Key of Solomon and the Tome of Eldritch Lore called the Key of Raziel. Summoned creatures have names like Fenrir and Nidhogg and Luka's familiar is named Sodom.
• In Bloody Monday the first group of terrorists take on religious code-names (Judas, Cain and Abel) and the second use fairy tail names (Peter Pan, Beast); their respective leaders are Simon and Arthur.
• The Holmes' Revelation arc of Case Closed (starting with File 743-752; episode 616-621) has a Roman/Greek god theme. The boy who introduces Conan to the mystery is named Apollo, his sister's name is Minerva, their mother's name is Juno, Minerva's ex-couch is named Ares, the criminal is named Hades, his presumely dead accomplice is named Hestia, and the riddle Conan has to solve involves Saturn. Additionally, Minerva's tennis opponant is named Demeter (Venus or Serena would be too obvious). Venus is a cat, and her owner Diana is the woman who invited Conan and his company to London in the first place. Frankly enough, nobody lampshades the theme of their names.
• Chainsaw Man: The Devils and Fiends under the control of the Devil Hunters Bureau are named after the orders of angels. Power and Angel are named after the angels they represent, so are the temporarily introduced Virtue, Seraphim, and Dominion. The two others, the Shark Fiend named Beam and the Spider Devil named Princi have their names derived from "Cherubim" and "Principality". The Violence Fiend, Galgali, is named after Galgalim, another name for the Ophanim, which are the eye-covered flaming wheels that form the Chariot of God in the Old Testament and are commonly equated with the Thrones.
• Code Geass uses Theme Naming for its Humongous Mecha, drawing from Arthurian Legend.
  • The flying fortress "Damocles" at the end of season two very much counts as one. King Dionysius offered his kingship to his courtier, Damocles, who gladly accepts. While enjoying the spoils of his new found title, he realizes a sword dangling high above his head, held only by a single horse hair. This could be compared to Lelouche's claim to his father's throne near the end of season two, with his brother Schnizel using the Damocles' incredible air power (comparable to the perilous sword above of Damocles) to subdue him as well as the entire world. With the justification of Peace Through Superior Firepower.
• The main characters' Divas in Cyber Team in Akihabara are all named after Greek goddesses, while the Terrible Trio's battle suits are named after Christian demons.
• Digimon Adventure and Digimon Adventure 02 have two brothers named after the Japanese hero Yamato Takeru. Carrying the joke further, one of the movies has them visit their grandmother in Shimane Prefecture, where Yamato Takeru was sent to die. They mostly spend that movie running around town, looking for a working computer.
• Dragon Ball
  • Mr. Satan is nicknamed after the biblical Satan, while his daughter Videl's name is an anagram of "devil". And Goku and Satan's mutual granddaughter gets two references: "Pan" is a loanword from Spanish meaning "bread," as her father's name, Gohan, means "rice;" they're both carbohydrates and staple foods, and it also refers to the satyr, Pan, who has the physical form we associate with Satan. In the Funimation dub, his first name is Hercule, obviously based off the Roman hero Hercules (the Latin name of Heracles).
  • Goku is based off of and even shares his name with Sun Wukong ^note Son Goku is the Japanese on'yomi of Sun Wokung , a character from Journey to the West.
• The characters of Eden: It's an Endless World! are named after a Gnostic theme. Those are rarely meaningful (Such as a druglord named Ennoia or Sofia, the freelance hacker). It's very significant in the case of the organisations, though, with a wannabe world-government named the Propater, led by a secret council called Pleroma and calling its Super Soldiers the Aeons.
• The homunculi in Fullmetal Alchemist bear the names of the Seven Deadly Sins: Envy, Pride, Wrath, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, and Sloth. And each and every one of them acts the part. Not necessarily a bad thing.
• Future Diary's Diary owners are all named after members of the Roman Pantheon.
• Gundam:
  • All Gundams from Mobile Suit Gundam 00 (except for the titular one and 0 Gundam), are named from the Christian Angelic Hierarchy. The protagonists are even called Celestial Being. Further, one of the Meisters' name is Allelujah, while his alter-ego is called Hallelujah. There's also another trio of meisters whose surname are Trinity.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans: As a contrast to the angelic theming of 00, the seventy-two Gundam Frames are all named after the seventy-two demons of the Ars Goetia. It is later revealed that the enemy the Gundam Frames were commissioned to fight, the Mobile Armors, had angelic names, with one that we see being named "Hashmal".
• Almost all characters from K, major and minor characters alike, are named after Shinto gods.
• In Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple, all the members of the Ragnarok are named after the Norse mythological figures Odin, Berserker, Freya, Loki, Siegfried, Hermit, Thor, and Valkyrie.
  • Many members of YOMI are also named after mythological figures as well. Castor and Pollux(Greek), Atalanta(Greek), Nagaraja(Hinduism), Narasimha(Hinduism), Suparna(Hinduism), and Lugh(Celtic).
• The Stands in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders went through several name themes. Initially they were named after the tarot, sometimes with a color added; Magician's Red, Star Platinum, Tower of Grey, Wheel of Fortune, etc. When they ran out of major arcana cards, they switched to Egyptian tarot (named after Egyptian gods).
• The Hiiragi sisters from Lucky Star are named Inori, Matsuri, Kagami and Tsukasa, respectively meaning "prayer", "festival", "mirror" ^note Kagami herself explains the religious significance of the mirror in Shinto. and "priest". Justified, since their father is a Shinto priest.
• Macross Frontier: The Variable Fighters of the protagonist Alto and The Rival/The Dragon Brera are designated the Messiah and Lucifer respectively. This is rather unusual as neither of them are a Messianic or Satanic Archetype.
• While she's probably supposed to be named after the car company given the series' love of Vehicular Theme Naming, Iris from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Reflection shares her name with the Greek goddess of rainbows (which fits with her status as a Hard Light projection).
• Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid:
  • Kanna Kamui and her father Kimun Kamui are both named after Ainu deities.
  • Lucoa is a diminutive taken from the Japanese pronounciation of Quetzalcoatl.
  • Subverted with Tohru, whose name is noted to sound identical to Thor (when pronounced in Japanese), but has a different origin in-universe.
• Naruto absolutely loves this trope, especially in regard to the multiple eye techniques, of which there are specific theme namings:
  • The techniques of the Sharingan are named after the kami/gods of Shintoism, Japan's indigenous and major religion. Examples include Tsukuyomi, Amaterasu, Susano'o, Izanagi, Izanami, Kotoamatsukami, Amenotejikara, and Amenominaka. There is one which doesn't fit this pattern: Kamui/Kamuy, which is the name of the spirits worshiped by the Ainu people^note  For those at home, the Ainu are Japan's indigenousest people, predating even the Yamato people who now dominate Japan. "Kamuy" isn't actually related to the word "kami", but they're similar enough to be equated, especially since they both refer to unseen beings worshiped by humans.
  • Meanwhile, the techniques of the Rinnegan are named after things in Buddhism, Japan's other major religion. These include the concept of the Six Paths, taken from the cycle of reincarnation (samsara, which is what the "Rinne" in "Rinnegan" refers to) that beings have to endure until they achieve nirvana. There's also the Outer Path, named after the tirthika, the word used by Buddhists to refer to non-Buddhists/gentiles, which they see as following an unnatural path of life; appropriately, one of the techniques this path is capable of is resurrecting the dead.
  • Non-jutsu example: of course, one shouldn't forget the Legendary Sannin: Jiraiya, Orochimaru, and Tsunade, who are named after the three main figures of The Tale of the Gallant Jiraiya, a well-known Japanese folktale involving ninjas with summoning magic, which is carried over here by having Jiraiya controlling toads, Orochimaru snakes, and Tsunade slugs. Other folktale examples include Kaguya Otsutsuki, the first human who possesses chakra and the actual person behind the Ten Tails who is named after Princess Kaguya, the protagonist of Japan's earliest recorded folktale, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. Her son, Hagoromo/The Sage of the Six Paths, is named after the flying robe that she used to go back to Moon after her time on Earth. On the other hand, their surname goes meta by referencing an extremely obscure consort of the (probably mythical) 11th Emperor of Japan, Kaguya, who was the daughter of King Otsutsukitarine. Legend goes that the aforementioned folktale was based on her.
  • Meanwhile, Hagoromo's two sons are references to figures in Hinduism. The older son, Indra, is named after the king of the gods/devas whose domains include skies and thunder (sounds familiar?), while the younger, Asura, is named after the race of the malevolent anti-gods who oppose the devas. Interestingly, Asura was the kinder of the two, because he favored the Power of Friendship, while Indra was Lonely at the Top.
  • The main villains of the Boruto: Naruto the Movie film, Momoshiki and Kinshiki Otsutsuki, are named after Momotaro and Kintaro, respectively, yet another ancient Japanese folktale figures.
  • Naruto's mother, Kushina Uzumaki, is named after Kushinadahime, the consort of Susano'o (mentioned above) whom he saved from Yamata-no-Orochi (which also partly inspired Orochimaru's name, too, by the way). Her husband and Naruto's father, Minato Namikaze, had a surname that means "wave and wind", which are Susano'o's primary domains.
  • Kabuto's surname, Yakushi, is a reference to Bhaisajyaguru (or Yakushi Nyorai in Japanese), a Buddha famous for his medicine which he uses to cure people from suffering.
  • Then there's the five Treasured Tools of the Sage of the Six Paths (Bashosen, Kokinjo, Shichiseiken, Benihisago, and Kohaku no Johei), which are lifted straight out of Journey to the West (Bajiaoshan, Huangjinying, Qixingjian, Honghulu, and Hupojingping, respectively). Their holders, Kinkaku and Ginkaku, are direct allusions to the Demon Kings Jinjiao and Yinjiao, one of the adversaries that Xuanzang and his company have to face. If you're looking for Sun Wukong, there's the Four Tails, or should we say, Son Goku.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion has the Angels named after deuterocanonical angels of the Bible, the Magi super-computer which is divided into three cores (Casper, Balthasar and Melchior) and mentions to Adam and Ev(e/a)^note The Evas were created from pieces of the first angel, Adam, and in every Romantic and Germanic language sans English, Eve is spelled and pronounced "Eva"., and Lilith.
• One Piece:
  • The franchise gives us Pluton, Poseidon, and Uranus, three ancient and ungodly powerful secret weapons. They're all named after Classical gods, and from the sound of it are meant to evoke the "land, sea, and air" arrangement of Kronos' three sons (Uranus isn't directly named after Zeus, but presumably that would be too obvious).
  • King Neptune and his late wife Otohime are both directly named after mythology; with Neptune being the Roman equivalent to Poseidon and Otohime being the daughter of the Japanese sea-god Ryūjin, fitting a couple of Merfolk. And to tie with the previous point, their daughter Shirahoshi is the current incarnation of Poseidon.
  • Prometheus and Zeus, Big Mom's top homies, are respectively named after a Greek titan that brought fire to mankind and the Greek god of thunder.
  • Also Loki, the Giant Prince of Elbaf, is named after - yep, you guessed it - Loki, the Trickster God of Norse Mythology. Makes sense, considering that Loki was also said to be a Jötunn, which are a race of giants. On the other hand, it is also likely that his name is a reference to Utgard-Loki, a Jotunn whom, unlike the Norse god of mischief, is the ruler of Utgard in Jotunheim, the homeland of the giants.
  • The World Nobles have religious themed naming scattered throughout their entire culture. Their formal name is the "Celestial Dragons", they all bear the title of "Saint" and reside in the "Land of the Gods" Marijoa, they demand "Heavenly Tribute" from the member nations of the World Government, and have "Holy Knights" at their call if things get dicey. Unsurprisingly, they almost all have major A God Am I complexes such that, when Marijoa is called the "Land of the Gods", they're the gods. At the top of it all is Imu, a mysterious person who secretly rules over it all, and whose name is derived from "Im", a jotunn in Norse mythology, while an Alternate Character Reading makes his name look like "Buddha".
• RahXephon has all of the Dolems named after musical terms, and there's a fair amount of people getting Mayan-mythology-inspired nicknames.
• Sailor Moon does this a lot:
  • Sailor Venus, Sailor Mercury, Sailor Mars, Sailor Jupiter, Sailor Uranus, Sailor Neptune, Sailor Saturn, and Sailor Pluto are all named after Greco-Roman gods (and one goddess), and/or after the planets named after said gods (and goddess). Queen Serenity and Princess Serenity are named after Selene, goddess of the moon, while Endymion is named after her human lover. A Sailor Senshi's powers and characteristics often relate to her god namesake: Neptune/Poseidon is the god of the sea, Jupiter/Zeus is associated with the oak tree ("Jupiter Oak Evolution"), Sailor Saturn's glaive is reminiscent of Saturn/Cronus' sickle, etc.
  • Their animal guardians fit too. The names of the cats (Luna, Artemis and Diana) are also names of the moon goddess, while Sailor Mars' crows (Phobos and Deimos) bear the names of the sons of Ares, Mars' Greek equivalent. Helios is named for a solar deity (some fans assume he takes the place of the nonexistent Sailor Sun), but he initially appears as a Winged Unicorn named Pegasus (yet another name from Greek mythology).
  • Among the villains, some types of Monster of the Week (youma, daimon, lemures) are named for mythical creatures, and sometimes the individual monster has its own mythological reference, such as Thetis. The Oppositio Senshi are named for Babylonian deities that are similar to the Sailor Senshi's Greco-Roman namesakes.
• Due to the nature of the series, almost everyone characters in Saint Seiya.
• All of the beings from the world of Guze in Shakugan no Shana take names out of various mythologies. Just to name a few: there's the "Seeking Professor", Dantalion; Margery's battle-hungry lord, Marchosias; and Shana's lord, "God of Judgment" and "Flame of Heaven", Alastor.
• Soul Eater's mangaka, Ookubo, obviously loves Theme Naming and Shout Outs. So, it's not at all surprising he would have religious and mythical themes thrown in. A few examples include:
  • Two of the Big Bads are named after the ancient mythical beings, Medusa and Arachne (which follow an animal motif of being a snake and spider respectively).
  • Medusa invades the body of a child (in the form of a snake no less). Her name? Rachel, which is likely a reference to Jacob's wife in the Bible.
  • Ragnarok
  • Marie Mjolnir, who turns into a hammer.
  • Tezca Tlipoca^note (though he has nothing to do with his namesake other than vague geographical jurisdiction; He's in charge of South America, whereas the Aztecs were in Mexico)
  • The Seven Deadly Sins are featured in the Book of Eibon. The protagonists in the book are also affected by whatever sin that chapter encompasses. The villain of the Eibon Arc is called Noah.
  • Speaking of Noah, his henchman is called Gopher, which is a reference to the gopher wood that Noah's ark was said to have been made of in the Bible.
  • The name Asura also comes from Hindu Mythology.
  • Baba Yaga Castle
  • Nidhogg (oddly, it's a ship rather than a dragon)
• The generals' mechas in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann are named after The Four Gods.
  • Further, many people see a connection between the main inspirational figure of TTGL having a name containing "kami" (the Japanese word for "God") and his friend/partner/successor being called Simon, as in Simon Peter, Jesus' disciple and the first pope. There's also something to be said about many of Kamina's original comrades dying in their efforts to defeat the enemy. Not sure about him being pierced by a spear though.
  • Yes, he was pierced by Thymilph's Gunmen, which carries a spear.
• In Tiger & Bunny, this applies to the characters' sponsors and companies that the heroes affiliate with (Apollon Media, Poseidon Line, Kronos Foods, Titan Industry, Helios Energy, Odysseus Communication, Helperides Finance). You could even argue that Lunatic's "sponsor" is Thanatos since he stated he only obeys his word.
• In Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun, almost all of the demons have surnames based on those from the Ars Goetia, with strong implications that each family are literally descended from their namesakes since the Ring of Solomon is a major plot-point. Quite notably two of the three main characters, Clara Valac (who can replicate anything she's seen, linking to Valac's ability to find treasures) and Alice Asmodeus (who mainly uses fire magic). The one exception is Ameri and her father Henri, who have the last name Azazel, based on the Biblical Fallen Angel, which still fits since a fallen angel is often a demon variant, but also implies that their lineage might be a bit different from everybody else.

Audio Drama

• In the Big Finish Doctor Who story Paradise 5, the two men running the eponymous Heaven-themed space station resort hotel are named Gabriel and Michael. The station's Slave Race ( actually the husks of former guests after experiencing the Paradise Machine) are called Cherubs and the extradimensional race using the stations to get footsoldiers for their war are the Elohim.

Comic Books

• The DCU has, among others:
  • A major crossover event called Armageddon 2001 (Book of Revelation).
  • Apokolips, Artemis, Azrael, Cain and Abel, Cerberus, Chronos (already confounded with Kronos by the Greeks), Diana (Prince), Doomsday, Female Furies, Hippolyte, Jericho, Lady Shiva, Lord Chaos, Lord Satanus, Maxie Zeus, Morpheus (Sandman), Naiad, New Genesis, Oracle, Orion, Project Cadmus, Rhea Jones, Son of Vulcan, Troia (Donna Troy), Wotan, Zatanna.
  • Legends of the Dead Earth: In Detective Comics Annual #9, Typhon's Binary Suns Osiris and Iris are located in the Greater Amun system. Osiris, Isis and Amun are all major gods in Egyptian Mythology.
• Marvel Universe:
  • The minor super-powered group the Pantheon took its names from The Iliad, while the Lords of Light and Darkness had names and powers patterned after the Vedic deities of India. The supervillain group Zodiac has twelve members named after the signs of the Zodiac, which are connected to Greek mythology.
  • Callisto and Ursa Major are ultimately named after the same person, who was first transformed into a she-bear and then a constellation.
  • Spider-Man clone Kaine and the Juggernaut (Cain Marko) are both named after Abel's brother.
  • Elektra wanted to avenge her murdered father. What are the odds?
  • Other characters with names from Greek and Roman mythology: Arachne, Aurora (known to the Greeks as Eos), Calypso, Cassandra Nova, Chimera (and Kymaera), Cyclops, Elysius, Eros, Gorgon, Hydra, Janus, Luna, Medusa, Mentor, Oracle, Phoenix (also Egyptian etc.), Plutonia, Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S., Proteus, Psyche, Selene, Sersi (= Circe), Siryn, Titan, Titania, Triton, Ulysses Bloodstone. Also possibly Colossus (the Colossus of Rhodes was a giant statue of the god Helios).
  • With names from the Bible, Judaism and Christianity: Ahab (possibly via Moby-Dick), Apocalypse and his Horsemen, Angel/Archangel, Black Goliath, Celestial Madonna, De'Lila (a Skrull), Diablo, Doc Samson, Exodus, Ezekiel, Gabriel (the Devil-Hunter), Genesis, Gideon, Gog (and Magog), Golem, Goliath, Jude (the Entropic Man), Kaballa, Legion, Mephisto, Nicholas Scratch (i.e. the devil), Professor Paxton Pentecost, Prester John, Revelation, Satannish, Son of Satan, Succubus. Possibly Joseph.
  • From other religions and mythologies: Banshee, Basilisk, Jihad, Juggernaut, Karma, Kismet, Merlin, Rama-Tut, Sphinx (the name is Greek, of course), Thunderbird. Possibly Karnak.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW): The avians of Ornithia are named after mythological birds and birdlike beings. The royal family is named chiefly after harpies, such as Ocypete and Aello, as is Captain Celaeno. The corvid Prince Huginn is instead named after one of Odin's ravens.
• Nemesis the Warlock: The Warlocks often share names with Terran deities. Nemesis himself is named for the Greek goddess of retribution; his wife, Chira, has a name derived from Chiron, and their son is named Thoth. Meanwhile, Nemesis has an uncle Baal, and Magna's father is named Ashtar, which seems to be based on Ishtar.

Fairy Tales

• In Italian fairy tale La Prezzemolina, collected by Vittorio Imbriani, Prezzemolina is kidnapped by some fairies and forced to work for them on difficult chores, but she is helped by Memè, the fairies' cousin. One of the tasks the girl is forced to perform is to go to "Fata Morgana" and get from there the "scatola del Bel-Giullare". According to the version, either Memè or a trio of helpful old ladies warn Prezzemolina Fata Morgana will devour her, and give her the means to appease the witch's servants.
• A character named Fada Morgana (or Mariana/Mariagna) appears in Catalan-language rondalles ('fairy tales') found in the Balearic islands. She is the antagonistic sorceress queen that opposes the heroine in variants of tale type ATU 425B, "Son of the Witch" (previously, "The Witch's Tasks") and former tale type AaTh 428, "The Wolf", of the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index (ATU).

Fan Works

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): Monster X's (Abraxas') scientific Meaningful Name continues the MonsterVerse's tradition where the Titans are often named after mythological figures if they aren't the source of the original lore.
• The Dragon and the Butterfly: Luisa names her Crimson Goregutter "Hercules."
• The King Nobody Wanted: The Archon of Mantarys, a city on the edge of the ruins of Valyria, is named Gorynych Zmei after the three-headed dragon of Slavic myth. His brother Tugarin is named after another Slavic dragon.
• Past Sins: Glimpses 2: "Day": Nyx now has a little sister, Helia, a feminimization of Helios, and both Nyx and Helios come from Classical Mythology, making it Family Theme Naming as well.
• A Song of Silk and Saplings: The Pale King's given name is Typhon in this story, and the White Lady's is Echidna.
• With Age Comes -- Absurdity? has Ajax, the head of the Parkinson family, and his children Castor, Jason and Ianthe.

Film — Live-Action

• In Appointment with Venus, the cow Venus' mate (who is killed before the film starts by a landmine) was a bull named Mars.
• The family of murderers in The Hills Have Eyes (1977) is headed by Papa Jupiter, and includes his sons, Mars, Pluto, and Mercury. In Roman mythology, Mars and Mercury were indeed sons of Jupiter, but Pluto was his brother. Mars is indeed the most aggressive and warlike, Jupiter is the rapacious leader who survived an attempted infanticide, Pluto is the strangest, but Mercury - apparently mentally handicapped - is far from the quick-witted messenger and mischief-maker of the legend.
• In Kingsman: The Secret Service, all of the Kingsmen whose names are given are named after figures from Arthurian Legend. Harry is Galahad and his compatriots are Arthur (The Leader), Merlin (the Techno Wizard) and Lancelot (who dies early on). It can be presumed the rest of the organization sticks to this theme, as Roxy's sponsor is Percival.
• In The Legend of Frenchie King, the Sarrazin siblings are Biblically named; the brothers Luc, Jean, Marc and Matthieu after The Four Gospels, and Maria after the Virgin Mary.
• Morpheus from The Matrix is named after the Greek mythological "lord of dreams", which is fitting since the "real world" is a simulation.
• MonsterVerse: Any Kaiju that was made up specifically for this continuity has their name taken from some mythological or biblical creature: Behemoth, Scylla, Tiamat, Leviathan, Methuselah, Bunyip, Yamata-No-Orochi, Quetzalcoatl, etc.
  • The MUTOs, who were introduced before this was established, are given the alternate name Jishin-Mushi, Japanese for 'Earthquake-Beetle", and the Skullcrawlers are posited to be one of the origins of the concept of demons (the other being Rodan).
  • Furthermore, the kaiju who existed in movies prior to this continuity (Godzilla, Mothra, Kong, Ghidorah, and Rodan) are each given mythical motifs of their own, each being associated with the concept of gods/angels/demons/devils.

Literature

• Alien in a Small Town has a lot of it. Paul, Nuada, Heimdall, Ishtar, Thrym Scyllaschild, Persephone, and Valhalla. Notable that Valhalla Crater on Callisto exists in Real Life.
• The Beginning After the End: The Divine Conflict that drives the plot of the novel is waged between the Indrath and the Vritra Clans, both of which derive their names from Hindu Mythology. The latter are named after a monstrous primeval serpent. while the former derive their name from Indra, the king of the gods and said serpent's Arch-Enemy.
• In Dean Koontz's Frankenstein tetralogy, Frankenstein's Monster has taken to calling himself Deucalion, after the mythical son of Prometheus. If you know the full title of Mary Shelley's book this is appropriate, but he also suggests there may be a prophetic meaning- Deucalion was the Greek equivalent of Noah, who supposedly helped rebuild the human race after a catastrophe. Later on, he considers changing his name to Christopher, after the Catholic Saint known for being a Gentle Giant.
• Doctor Who Expanded Universe does this with some renegade Time Lords (who are generally No Name Given in the series). It started with the unmade Leakey script stating that the Doctor's father was named Ulysses, from Classical Mythology. Then the Master's name was revealed as Koschei, a lich from Slavic Mythology, and the Rani's was given as Ushas, a goddess in Hindu Mythology (appropriate, given the origins of her adopted title). Exceptions are the Monk and the War Chief, who were named Mortimus and Magnus before the pattern started, and the Doctor's name, of course, remains unrevealed.
• Domina:
  • A lot of the higher-level people use mythological names. Though for many, it's not clear what exactly the source is—Orcus, for example, is the name of a Roman god, but based on context he's probably named after the Dungeons & Dragons demon prince. Some of them get pretty obscure, too. How many people know that Aramazd is the father of the gods in Armenian mythology?
  • Orcus is confirmed in the culture documents to be named after the Roman god. He originally named his culture Thanatosians, but people missed the point and just started calling them orcs.
• Harry Potter has so many that it has its own page.
• Hive Mind (2016) has a group of terrorists named Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, and Venus. Jupiter is the leader. The theme naming is actually a plot point — since Roman mythology appears to be forgotten and the existence of non-Earth planets is highly classified information, very few people would have known enough to make the reference.
• The Hobbit: With the exception of Bilbo Baggins, every member of the Company, including Gandalf, has a name taken straight from the Poetic Edda's list of dwarves.
• Homer Price has Homer's Uncle Telemachus, Uncle Ulysses, who runs the town lunchroom, and Grampa Hercules, the resident Tall Tale teller.
• Honor Harrington: The Star Kingdom of Manticore is real big on naming stuff after mythical creatures. They've got the planets Manticore, Spinx, Gryphon, and Medusa (which orbits the star Basilisk). They also like Greek history and mythology for ship names. Also, their three major space stations/shipyards, Hephaestus, Vulcan, and Weyland, are named for smiths depicted in Greek Mythology, Roman Mythology, and Norse Mythology mythology respectively.
• Jacob's Ladder Trilogy: The AIs on Jacob's Ladder are named after Angels; some examples include Israfil, Samael, and Asrafil.
• Jedi Academy Trilogy: Following the trend set by the Chimera, Thrawn's flagship in The Thrawn Trilogy, the Star Destroyers under Natasi Daala's command are named Gorgon, Hydra, Basilisk and Manticore.
• Kate Shugak: Subverted. The town paramedics are brothers named Matthew, Mark, Luke — and Pete.
• The Locked Tomb: There's a divide between the Houses on this for given names. Houses affiliated with the Empire's military, such as the Second and Fourth, use names from the Bible, while most of the remaining houses use names that derive from Greek and Roman mythology, although there are also a few exceptions, such as Dulcinea and Colum. Averted for the Ninth, as they don't match either theme, with most of the names in the Ninth being Latin-sounding but original. The unknown "Gideon" at Canaan House who may have been Gideon Nav's namesake was seemingly from the Second, making her name fitting the biblical theming a subtle hint into her Mysterious Past.
• The Mortal Instruments: The Silent Brothers give up their birth names upon joining, instead taking on the name of a man from The Bible.
• The Reynard Cycle: Most characters have the names of animals from folklore and mythology, with Reynard being the most obvious example. In some cases the French or Latin word for the animal is used, making this a case of Bilingual Bonus for savvy readers.
• The children's book Save Halloween! has the four Filkens children: the older twins Matthew and Mark, Luke, and narrator Johanna — her parents didn't expect her to be a girl and would have named their fourth son John.
• Sentou Yousei Yukikaze: The alien planet is named "Faery", and the Faery Air Force's bases and aircrafts are all named after fantastic/mythological creatures (FFR-31 Sylph/Sylphid, Banshee Flying Aircraft Carrier, F/A-2 Fand, Kraken Sq., Ghoul Sq., etc).
• Simon Ark: In "The Unicorn's Daughter", the members of a commune all adopted the names of mythical creatures: Griffon, Phoenix, Chimera, etc. After the commune disbands, some of the members go back to their original names, while others legally change their surnames to the name of their mythical beast.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Cersei Lannister is named after a witch who enjoyed turning men into pigs.
  • In-universe, Balerion, Meraxes, and Vhagar, the three dragons that Aegon the Conqueror and his sisters used to subjugate Westeros, were named after ancient Valyrian gods. Syrax, the dragon mount of Rhaenyra Targaryen, was also named after a Valyrian god.
• Thursday Next: The Big, Screwed-Up Family of bad guys are named Hades, and their first names are all names of the rivers of Hades — Acheron is the villain of the first book, Syx is the family idiot, and Lethe is the "white sheep" of the family and is the only one to not be evil. An odd case is the only sister, Aornis. The other characters recognize this as another underworld river, fitting the pattern — but the river isn't from real-life mythology, and was invented for the story.
• The Twilight Saga. A lot of the werewolves have biblical names, such as Jacob, Leah, Seth, Samuel, Paul, etc.
• The Underland Chronicles: All of the bats have names taken from Greek mythology.
• La Vita Nuova: Giovanna is named so because, like how John (Giovanni) the Baptist came before Jesus, she appears just before Beatrice when Dante first sees her in adulthood.
• The Wheel of Time: Several characters are named after figures in Arthurian Legend.

Live Action TV

• Alien Worlds (2020): Each of the four alien planets is named after a being or place from real-life religion that reflects its nature and conditions. Atlas, a high-gravity super-Earth home to a complex airborne biota, is named after the titan who held up the vault of the sky; Janus, a tidally locked world divided between a scorched daylit side and a freezing night side, is named after the Roman two-faced god; Eden, a lush world filled with diverse life, is named after the garden where life began in the Abrahamic scriptures; and Terra, a world home to a highly advanced alien race used to model humanity's own future, is named after the Roman goddess of and word for the Earth itself.
• In Babylon 5, the Earth Alliance mostly use Roman and Greek names for their warships (Agamemnon, Heracles, Pollux, Vesta, Agrippa, Damocles, Furies, Apollo, Medusa, Juno, and Zeus to name just a few). This is not universal, as a sizeable number of ships take their names from other sources (important personalities, locations, battles and Jewish religion to name a few) and the Explorer-class ships appear to have their own theme naming based on explorers and people otherwise important for geography.
• On Dollhouse, the Washington, D.C. Dollhouse apparently uses Greek gods to code name their Actives.
• Emmerdale: All of the members of the Dingle clan have biblical names — Zacariah, Shadrach, Cain, Samson, Charity, etc. Reached ridiculous levels with the introduction of Shadrach's long-lost daughter, Genesis.
• The three Burns children in First Kill are named after figures from Greek mythology, though they also have more mundane nicknames: eldest son Theseus (Theo), middle child Apollo (Paolo), and teenage daughter Calliope (Cal).
• In the Grimm episode "The Believer", the Monster of the Week is a preacher whose bodyguards are named Mark, Luke and John. Hank lampshades this:
  Hank: Mark, Luke and John? Really?
  Wu: I'm just the messenger. And not from on high.
• Heroes has a good many Biblical names, a few being: Peter, Gabriel, Nathan, Noah, Samson, Matt/Matthew, Micah, Benjamin, and Sarah, the last of whom got a twothreefer for her alias: Eden McCain.
• Two characters in Kamen Rider Kabuto are named after two of the three Imperial treasures of Japan. Arata Kagami's last name is a homophone of 'mirror' in Japanese, thus representing the Eight-Hand Mirror. Tsurugi Kamishiro's first name means 'sword', representing the Kusanagi-no-tsurugi ("Grass-Cutter Sword"). These names are meaningful because the Three Treasures once belonged to the sun goddess Amaterasu, and Tendou has a major sun motif.
• On Lost, many of the characters who aren't named for philosophers have biblical names: John, Matthew, Jacob, Benjamin, James, Michael, Aaron, etc., not to mention Christian Shephard. Horace Goodspeed's name seems to evoke the Egyptian Horus. Then there's Richard Alpert (after the real name of new age guru Ram Dass), or as some fans would call him, RA.
• Arturo "El Rey" Gomez III in Luke Cage runs a discount furniture chain, Merlin Discount Furniture, and also uses it as a front for a drug smuggling operation that pushes heroin branded "El Tercero". The fact that both his legal and his criminal businesses use names connected to the King Arthur legend make it easy for Luke to figure out his identity.
• The Outer Limits (1995):
  • In "Lithia", Hera and Phoebe are named after female characters from Greek Classical Mythology, while Lithia's neighboring enclave Hyacinth is named after a male Greek hero, in spite of the fact that this female-only world abhors men. Major Jason Mercer is presumably named after Jason, the leader of the Argonauts.
  • In "Promised Land", almost all of the former slaves have given names which are derived from Hebrew such as Rebecca, Tali, David, Isaac, Caleb, Ruth and Joshua. This is in keeping with the storyline's resonance with the Book of Exodus. Exceptions to the theme include Alex and Henry.
  • In "A New Life", Daniel, Thomas, Beth (short for Elizabeth) and Jacob are all named after major figures from The Bible.
• The Asgard from Stargate SG-1 all have names of, and were in fact the inspiration for, the gods of Norse Mythology.
  • All the Goa'uld are named after gods from different mythologies (and took on those names specifically to control humans by pretending to be gods. There's Ra, Osiris, Apophis, Anubis, Hathor, etc. from the ancient Egyptian sphere; Ba'al of the Canaanites (mentioned in the Bible); Cronus from Greek mythology; Nirrti from Hinduism, and those are just a few of the main ones.
  • Tau'ri warships get their names mainly from figures in Greek Mythology that haven't been identified as Goa'uld. The first and only BC-303 was the Prometheus. The later BC-304 Daedalus-class continued the trend; three of the four operated by the US Air Force are named Daedalus, Apollo, and Odyssey, respectively. The fourth USAF 304 was to be named Phoenix, but was rechristened George Hammond after the SGC's founding general. Averted for the other two 304s, which are operated by Russia and China and named Korolev^note destroyed with all hands by the Ori and Sun Tzu respectively.
• All of the angels on Supernatural have theophoric (bearing a deity) names, even Zachariah and Balthazar.
  • A slightly more specific example: Castiel's rebellious inclinations are first hinted at when he starts not being particularly bothered by being called "Cass" for short. (The -el suffix being the part that refers to God).
• The X-Files: Although it's fairly subtle, in one episode a pair of twins (one of whom is mentally challenged, the other of whom was a rocket scientist) are named Arthur (from the Grail legends) and Roland (from The Song of Roland, an Old French epic). The fact that Mulder and Scully didn't make the connection earlier is quite disappointing.

Manhwa

• Various villainous characters from NOW, a Korean martial arts comic series, are named after Hindu gods: Shiva, Asura, Rakshasha, Hanuman, etc.

Podcasts

• In Gospels of the Flood the group of priests who studied together all have a name linked to religion (except for the narrator who has No Name Given).
• The titular park from Residents of Proserpina Park is named after Proserpina, the Roman version of the Greek goddess Persephone.
• Wolf 359: Both Hera and the U.S.S. Hephaestus get their names from Greek mythology.

Professional Wrestling

• CHIKARA:
  • Icarus, who is billed from "Mount Olympus".
  • The Osirian Portal, "The Funky Pharaoh" Amasis and "The Venomous Vile Serpent from the Nile" Ophidian, whose whole gimmick was derived from Egyptian Mythology.
  • Tursas and Nøkken of Die Bruderschaft des Kreuzes. The former is a Finnish Sea Monster, and the latter name is taken from Norwegian river demons.
  • Deucalion, taken from a hero who survived the Greek mythological version of The Great Flood. Ironically, he was the Big Bad of The Flood, the amalgamation of Heel groups out to destroy CHIKARA, and the most evil villain in the promotion's history.
• Hercules Hernandez, who was very muscular and strong.
• The Eliminators (Perry Saturn and John Kronus) took their names from, respectively, the Roman and Greek gods of the harvest in Classical Mythology. They wanted to call their team The Harvesters of Sorrow but Jerry Lawler told them that people wouldn't get the mythological reference.

Tabletop Games

• In the chapter-heading vignettes in GURPS Ultra-Tech, the elite agents of the Imperial Secret Service are named after archangels: Michael, Gabrielle and Raphael. Pyramid #100 names the quasi-independent branch of ISS they work for as Galactic Operations Directorate, and they have Cherubim and Seraphim class spaceships.
• In Halt Evil Doer!, the equivalent of Kryptonians are the Mithrans, who have an angelic theme and names to match. The Superman Substitute, Divinos, has the real name Mikhael; his sister Angel Girl (Supergirl) is Gabrielle, and the General Zod counterpart is Commander Iblis.
• Magic: The Gathering has its original Gods (and no Goddesses!) merely inspired by gods from Greek and Egyptian mythology, but there's Erebos, God of the Dead who is based on an actual Greek god.
• In Splicers, the malevolent supercomputer N.E.X.U.S. has seven main split personalities, each named after a goddess or other female mythological figure: Freya wants to replace the human settlements with orderly, robot-populated and -controlled "Ghost Cities"; Gaia seeks to preserve nature, even from robot-kind, and is fascinated by the Organic Technology used by humans; the sadistic Kali is more interested in toying with and tormenting humans than wiping them out outright; Hecate is preoccupied with building new and better war machines and testing them against humans; Ishtar is the lead stragetist and the one most focussed on wiping out the human race (much to her own frustration); Eve is the only personality fully sympathetic to the humans, and tries to help them out behind her sisters' backs; and Lilith is a wild-card who toys with both humans and her "sisters" for her own amusement.
• Plenty in The World of Darkness: Most vampire princes like to use these names (and may claim to have been the first to use them). Theres companies such as the Cheiron Group (named after the inventor of medicine; they graft monster parts onto people to improve them) and the Orpheus Group (provide astral trips into the afterlife for a fee).
• Mythological gods are one source of inspiration for Yu-Gi-Oh! cards:
  • Egyptian mythology: The source that inspires this whole Yu-Gi-Oh! universe. Three out of the four Egyptian Gods are based on real gods: "Slifer the Sky Dragon" (known in Japan as "Osiris"), "The Winged Dragon of Ra" and "Holactie, the Creator of Light". The "Hieratic Dragons" are also named after Egyptian gods, but their names are spelt in funny ways, for example, "Hieratic Dragon of Asar".
  • Greek Mythology and planets of the Solar System: Several cards from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, including "Athena", "Splendid Venus", "The Big Saturn", etc.
  • Norse Mythology: These are from the Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds era: the three most well-known gods, "Odin, Father of the Aesir", "Thor, Lord of the Aesir" and "Loki, Lord of the Aesir", and related groups of cards "Nordic Ascendant", "Nordic Alfar", "Nordic Beast" and "Nordic Relic". Less known are the "Valkyries" from Yu-Gi-Oh!.
  • Native mythology of the Americas: A couple of other cards from Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's are also inspired by Mayan and Inca gods, such as "Ultimaya Tzolkin" and the "Earthbound Immortals".
  • Japanese, Chinese and Hindu mythology: The biggest source of inspiration so far for Spirit monsters and related cards: "Izanagi", "Izanami", "Amaterasu", "Tsukuyomi", "Susa Soldier", "Sword of Kusanagi", "Yata-Garasu", "Yamata Dragon", "Asura Priest", "Rasetsu", etc. Various other cards, such as "Yosen", "Shiranui" and "Mayakashi" cards, also draw inspiration from Asian mythology.
  • Cthulhu Mythos: The "Elder Entities", "Old Entities" and "Outer Entities".

Theatre

• The names of the Altar Boyz members are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Juan, named after the apostles. Of course, there's also Abraham.
• Cesare - Il Creatore che ha distrutto — When Cesare meets Naïve Newcomer Angelo, he remarks that his name means "Angel", and reflects on the distance between the reality of Italy in 1491, versus the "Kingdom of God" that he believes it should be. Throughout the course of the play, Angelo helps show him a new viewpoint on these ideas.
• In Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, the brothers are named Adam, Benjamin, Caleb, David, Ephraim, Frank, and Gideon, mostly after names in The Bible. The "Odd Name Out" is Frank, short for "Frankincense", as there are no "F" names in the Old Testament, the equivalent sound being represented by the diphthong "ph". Frank, naturally, becomes incensed if you call him by his full name. And when the wife of the eldest brother gives birth to a daughter, she sticks with the established trend and names her Hannah.

Video Games

• In Asura's Wrath, many of the characters have a theme naming based on Buddhism and Hindu Mythology.
• Battlestar Galactica Online has both Colonial and Cylon Lines and Carriers named after Norse myth. There are also Cylon Escorts named after ghost types (Banshee, Spectre, Wraith, etc).
• beatmania IIDX 13: Distorted: The composers of the extra stages are named after The Four Gods: Seiryuu, Suzaku, Genbu and Byakko.
• BioShock and its sequel include many areas named after Greek gods or mythological concepts, such as Apollo Square, Arcadia, and Dionysus Park, although the only character named for a god is Atlas. The Bible also shows up - the Underwater City is Rapture, whose downfall was helped by the mutagen ADAM (which has a power-generating form, EVE), a club is named Eve's Garden, and a scientist develops a tree-resurrecting vial called Lazarus Vector.
• In Body Harvest, all the bosses are named after mythological monsters and demons: Leviathan, Cerberus, Moloch, Beelzebub, and Tomegatherion.
• Borderlands:
  • Planets are named after (mostly) mythological figures. As a Genius Bonus, the setting is a Death World called Pandora (after the box, presumably) and its more civilized, developed moon is called Elpis (after Hope, the last thing that survived the box opening).
  • Also, both the Mega Corps in the setting are mostly named after Greek Titans. Hyperion does another Genius Bonus by naming its Pandoran space station base Helios, after Hyperion's son.
• BRAHMA Force: The Assault on Beltlogger 9 has the titular mecha, named after a Hindu Creation deity. Of course, it also means Bipedal Robotic Assault Heavy Mechanized Armor.
• In the English version of Chrono Trigger, the three Gurus of Zeal were named Melchior, Gaspar, and Belthasar after the three biblical wise men. Additionally, the Prince of the Kingdom of Zeal is named Janus, after the two-faced Roman god of time and doorways.
• Cube Colossus: Norse Mythology for most of the A.M.Us. 02: Heimdall, 03: Valkyrie, X: Odin, Y: Loki.
• Destiny and Destiny 2: The Vex units all seem to be named after mythological monsters, like Goblins (Mooks), Hobgoblins (Slighly stronger Mooks), Harpies (Airborne Mooks), Minotaurs (Giant Mooks), and Hydras (Strongest of the basic units). Note that despite the names, none of them look anything like what they're named after, except in a very superficial sense.
• In Deus Ex, UNATCO's security levels are named after the Christian angelic hierarchy, ranging from Angel/0A to Seraphic/8X. There's also implied to be a God clearance level.
  • The game's artificial intelligences are named after Greek mythology: Icarus, Daedalus, Helios, and Morpheus.
• Devil May Cry:
  • Most demons and Devil Arms in the series are named after mythological figures and creatures from various origins. Some demons who share a similar role or backstory are often named from the same source, such as the Seven Hells from Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening (named after each of the Seven Deadly Sins), the brothers Baul and Modeus from Devil May Cry: The Animated Series (their names are derived from Baal and Asmodeus from Judeo-Christian demonology or from the Ars Goetia), or the cloaked Mephisto and Faust demons from Devil May Cry 4 (who are named after the Faust myth from German folklore).
  • This can also apply to objects and structures. Devil May Cry 5 for instance borrows names from mythologies that revolve around a World Tree; "Qliphoth" comes from Jewish mythology and is interpreted rather literally as the Tree of Death, while the "Nidhogg Hatchling" is named after Nidhogg of Norse mythology, the dragon who chews the roots of the cosmic tree Yggdrasil.
• Excluding the secret level, every map in The Ultimate Doom's fourth episode is named after a phrase from the Bible, as is the episode itself ("Thy Flesh Consumed", a phrase from Proverbs 5:11).
• Dragalia Lost has several Dragons, Fiends, and even weapons named after various gods and monsters from various myths and legends, see here for the full list.
• All the dragons in Drakengard have some sort of angelic name.
• EA Sports Street's NFL Street has the Challenge mode team optimized for pass defense, who are all named after Greek gods, heroes, and monsters (except for the QB, named for Greek playwright Aristophanes). The strong RB who breaks tackles? Scott Hercules. The speedy defensive back? Jason Hermes. You get the idea.
• EVE Online has the Amarr Empire, who name all their ships based on Christian myth (Armageddon, Omen, Apocalypse), the Caldari state has a few Mythological creatures (Rokh, Kitsune, Tengu), the Gallente have Greek/Hindu (Ishtar, Helios), and the Minmatar like Norse (Huginn, Muninn, Ragnarok).
• Final Fantasy: The Summoned beasts of Final Fantasy are named after deities or beings from real-world mythologies, but are so different from the deities they are named for that they qualify. Some notable examples include:
  • Shiva from Hindu Mythology is the male god of destruction, while Final Fantasy's Shiva is the female goddess of ice.
  • The Titans from Classical Mythology were an entire race of non-elemental Abusive Precursors to the Olympians, while Titan in Final Fantasy is the singular god of earth.
  • Odin from Norse Mythology is the Top God of his setting and carries a spear named Gungir, as opposed to Odin of Final Fantasy just being an extremely powerful summons who wields the Zanketsuken sword.
• Fire Emblem does this sometimes for character names and artifacts:
  • The Elibe games (Binding Blade and Blazing Blade) drew from The Song of Roland.
  • Path of Radiance pulled from Arthurian Legend.
  • Some weapons and characters in the series, especially from the Jugdral games are named or based on Norse Mythology. Exaggerated in Fire Emblem Heroes, where the whole universe the game takes place in is themed entirely on Norse Mythology.
• From the FreeSpace series of space sims:
  • Terran ships get their names from Greek mythology. Apollo, Athena, Medusa, Hercules, Orion, etc. Also from Norse mythology as well: Valkyrie, Loki, Mjolnir, Fenris, etc.
  • Vasudan ships have an ancient Egyptian theme: Horus, Serapis, Hatshepsut, Aten, Anubis...
  • Shivan ships have a demonic motif: Seraphim, Basilisk, Lucifer, Sathanas, Ravana, Lilith, and so on. There's also a destroyer class that's simply called "Demon".
  • The first game designated Terran wings with Greek letters (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc.). Enemy Terrans were Traitor Alpha, Traitor Beta, etc. Vasudan wings were Zodiac signs (Aries, Virgo, Libra...) and Shivan wings were Hindu gods (Brahma, Vishnu, Durga...). The second game simplified this by simply designating allied wings by Greek letters and enemy wings by Zodiac signs, regardless of race.
• Genshin Impact:
  • Paimon, Morax (a.k.a. Rex Lapis), Barbatos, Baal and Decarabian are named after demons from Ars Goetia.
  • The various elemental gems used to Ascend characters are named after various Hindu gods.
  • From Norse Mythology, Dainsleif takes his name from the cursed sword of King Högni, while the dragons Dvalin and Durin are named after dwarves.
  • There are also terms and concepts taken from Gnosticism, such as the seven Archons (the servants of the Demiurge) and Gnosis (knowledge of the divine).
  • Tartaglia's real name is Ajax, the famed Trojan hero in Classical Mythology and warrior of courage from Homer's The Iliad. His little brother is also named Teucer, the half-brother of Ajax in Classical mythology.
• The assassins from Ghost Trick, Jeego and Tengo, get their names from the Japanese words for Hell (jigoku) and heaven (tengoku) respectively.
• In the God Eater series, most of the monsters, called Aragami, are named after various mythological and religious figures. This ranges from Japanese (Kyuubi) to Egyptian (Sekhmet) to Hindu (Vajra) to even Gnosticism (Demiurge) and many others.
• Granblue Fantasy: This naming convention is all over the place, whether they may be playable characters, weapons, summons, or enemies. A lot of names and terms (some of which came from Rage of Bahamut) are based on mythological concepts and entities:
  • Playable characters like Yggdrasil, Tiamat, Fenrir (who also act as summons and bosses), Leviathan, Lucifer, Sandalphon, Azazel...
  • Non-playable characters like Loki, Belial, Beelzebub, and the four Primarch Angels Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, and Uriel...
  • Summons like Odin, Zeus, Thor, Baal, Athena, Tsukuyomi...
  • Raid bosses like the Four Beasts Zhuque, Xuanwu, Baihu, Qinglong...
  • Some Weapon skills are also named after deties like Gaia, Horus, Aeolus, Shalim...
• In the Halo games, the various Covenant vehicles are named after supernatural creatures including the Ghost, Wraith, Revenant, Lich, and Shade.
• Inazuma Eleven has Zeus, a team whose members are named after gods and goddesses from the Greek Mythology, to go along with the team's gimmick of having superpowered kids who believe they're gods. Aphrodi/Afuro Terumi, Apollos/Aporo Hikaru, Ares/Aresu Ran etc.
• In Killer7, the names of the three spirits Iwazaru, Mizaru, and Kikazaru in Japanese refer to the 'speak no evil', 'see no evil', and 'hear no evil' monkeys, respectively.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • The recurring Ragnarok ability is named after the end of the world in Norse mythology.
  • Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days: Some of Xaldin's alternate weapons are named after constellations, mythological creatures, and other religious themes.
  • Kingdom Hearts III: A lupine Heartless is named Skoll, named after the wolf who chases after the sun endlessly and is fated to swallow it during Ragnarok.
  • Most of the residents of Scala ad Caelum are named after characters in Norse mythology. In Kingdom Hearts Dark Road, Xehanort and Eraqus's fellow classmates are named Bragi, Vor, Urd, Hermod, Baldr, Vidar, Vala, Vali, Hoder, Heimdall, Helgi, and Sigrun, with their Keyblade Master being named Odin. χ also has a character named Sigurd.
• Most Prominent LBX in LBX: Little Battlers eXperience are named after figures from Greek Mythology (Achilles, Pandora, Perseus) with a dash of Norse Mythology (Odin and Fenrir). Their creator, Professor Yamano, is shown to be fond of these stories.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Link's horse Epona is named after a Celtic fertility goddess and guardian of horses.
  • The three oracles from the Oracle games are an in-universe example, being named after the three Golden Goddessess at the center of the series' mythology. Any actual connection between the two trios beyond the names is unclear.
• Lenna's Inception: Most of the Archangels' names are parodies of the names of angels and demons from various Judeo-Christian apocrypha.
  • Azraflail = Azrael
  • Crabaddon = Abaddon
  • Catsiel = Cassiel or Castiel
  • Headraniel = Hadraniel
  • Santaquiel = Sahaquiel
  • Tentaluchus = Temeluchus
  • Hatasiah = Hahasiah
  • Sandolphin = Sandalphon
  • Chairman G/Mammon = Mammon, an Aramaic word for money, which was personified by early Christians as a deity of greed and wealth.
  • Delvin is pretty clearly a near-anagram of "Devil".
  • Lenna, as the 'mother of monsters', is likely standing in for Lilith.
• In Live A Live, the four major keys of the Dungeon of Keys are named after The Four Gods.
• Mass Effect:
  • The three classes of Mecha-Mooks in Mass Effect 2 are LOKI (humanoid), FENRIS (dog-like), and YMIR (giant).
  • The planet the Overlord DLC takes place on has four stations; Hermes Station, the communication center, Vulcan Station, the geothermal power plant, Prometheus Station, a crashed geth ship and Atlas Station, the main base where the Overlord himself is housed.
    • In Mass Effect 3, Cerberus continues the classical mythology theme with the Atlas mech, a YMIR mech refitted so it can be manually piloted, and an earlier model, the Triton mech, adjusted for deep-sea diving. There's also the Nemesis, but the allusion to classical mythology may or may not be intentional.
  • Husks, which are formed from bodies impaled upon massive spikes nicknamed "Dragon's Teeth", a throwback to the Greek myth of Jason and the Golden Fleece in which 'dragon's teeth' were sown on Athena's instruction to create vicious warrior-men.
• Mega Man
  • Most Bosses from the Mega Man Zero series derive their names from creatures of various myths and religion, like Guard Orotic, Anubis Necromancess, Asura Basura, Hanumachine, etc. Three of the Four Guardians are named after a harpy, the fafnir and the leviathan.
  • Mega Man Star Force 2 had villains based on UMAs (Unidentified Mysterious Animals), like ghosts, the Yeti or the Loch Ness Monster.
• Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater plays with this quite a bit. Naked Snake's contact is meant to be ADAM, but turns out to be EVA. In the end, the roles are reversed — the Snake is tempted by EVA, and ADAM (a.k.a. Major Ocelot) falls for the Snake.
• Persona 3 plays this straight, with the Personas of S.E.E.S. being named after well-known personalities in Western mythology (ex. Messiah, Orpheus, Polydeuces, Castor, Pallas Athena, Cerberus, Hermes) Persona 4 does the same thing, except with figures in Japanese Mythology instead (ex. Izanagi-no-Okami, Amaterasu, Take-Mikazuchi, Kanzeon).
• Primal has a lot of mythological connections.
• Red Dead Redemption II has outlaw protagonist Arthur Morgan, whose full name is Arthurian in origin: his first name, "Arthur", fits in with the legendary King Arthur, and his surname, "Morgan", fits in with the sorceress Morgan le Fay. Of course, his name can be more meaningful depending on what you do with his honor meter. His old horse, Boadicea, is also named after a mythological British royal. She was a Queen in the first century AD who led an uprising against the Romans.
• Finnish Remedy Entertainment likes to throw in many Norse and Slavic mythological Shout Outs in their games. Include but are not limited to:
  • Max Payne: Apart from being a Whole-Plot Reference to the Ragnarök (which supplies the name for the club Ragna Rock), it introduces Alex Balder and a helpful and one-eyed old guy named Woden. Of course, there also are the Aesir Cooperation, the drug Valkyr, and a little something called Project: Valhalla (the information to which can be accessed through the computer network Yggdrasil).
  • Alan Wake: Pretty much an Alternate History horror thriller to Max Payne with plenty of Shout Outs to the game franchise. Features an 80s Heavy Mithril band themed after Norse Mythology called The Old Gods of Asgard, whose members were Odin, Tor, Loki and "Fat Bob" Balder. The Eldritch Abomination Big Bad uses an old woman named Barbara Jagger as its human host, who used to live in Bird Leg Cabin, both references to Baba Yaga.
• In Returnal, the main character Selene, her mother Theia, the various boss monsters like Phrike and Ixion, and the planet Atropos are all named after figures from Classical Mythology.
• The names of the planets, celestial bodies, and geographical features in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri are all based on the Greek myths relating to the centaurs of Greek myth:
  • The planet on which the humans settle, the second planet of Alpha Centauri A, is called Chiron, after the greatest, noblest, and wisest of the centaurs (he taught Hercules in some versions of the myths). Most of the settlers, however, simply call it Planet.
  • Planet has two moons; these are named Pholus and Nessus. Pholus in Greek myth was the only good and wise centaur other than Chiron, and a friend and teacher of Hercules. Nessus was a more typical brutish centaur, but was crafty enough to kill Hercules by tricking his wife (albeit while he was dying from a wound inflicted by Hercules).
  • The first planet of Alpha Centauri A is a Mercury-like dead ball of rock named Eurytion, after a centaur who tried to extort King Dexamenus into giving him one of his daughters (either Deianira or Mneisimache). For this, Eurytion was also killed by Hercules, and (in stories where Deianira is the daughter of Dexamenus and not Oeneus or Dionysos) Hercules got to marry Deianira.
  • We should note here that Chiron and Pholus were both accidentally killed by Hercules as well; Chiron when a poisoned arrow Hercules had fired at another, nastier centaur nicked him on the way, and Pholus when he foolishly picked up the arrowhead to marvel at how it could kill so great a being as Chiron. It should therefore come as no surprise that Alpha Centauri B, whose perihelion makes Planet's native life go into a very nasty overdrive, is dubbed Hercules by the settlers.
  • The standard "Map of Planet" contains many names of geographical features that refer to some of the above figures, as well as a few others. For instance, the largest island is called the "Isle of Deianira."
• In StarCraft, Terran units capable of cloaking are usually named for spirits: Ghosts and Wraiths from the original, and Spectres and Banshees from the sequel.
• In Star Trek Online the variants on the Multi-Vector Advanced Escort are named Prometheus-class, Phoenix-class, Cerberus-class, and Hephaestus-class.
• Steambot Chronicles: Battle Tournament uses Greco-Roman mythological theme naming. However, since many of these are also the names of celestial bodies, and those that don't match the pattern are named for stars with names not derived from mythology, it's hard to tell if they were going for this or Stellar Names — except for male lead "Apollo", who is distinctly a mythical case.
• The Human Aliens from the planet Balmar in several of the Super Robot Wars games, virtually without exception, have names taken from the Bible, from Judeo-Christian myth, or other Hebrew words. In particular, there is a whole series of clones who are named after the Seven Churches in the Book of Revelation.
  • Subversion in Super Robot Spirits and the other games with the Judecca; while "Judecca" refers to Judas Iscariot, the disciple of Jesus Christ who betrayed him, each of the Judecca's attacks ("Caina", "Antenora", "Ptolomea" and "Judecca") corresponds to a section of the ninth and lowest circle of hell in The Divine Comedy.
• The two main Sufficiently Advanced Aliens factions in the MMORPG Tabula Rasa are the Eloh and Neph. Elohim and Nephilim are divine beings described in the Hebrew Bible — which makes some sense given that they're the Precursors.
• In Tachyon: The Fringe, GalSpan ships get names from Greek Mythology. Among fighters, we have examples like the Pegasus interceptor and the Orion multirole fighter.
• Similarly, most of the locations in Tales of the Abyss are themed around the The Sephirot, a term from the Kabbalah school of thought in Judaism. This is why the crust of Auldrant is held up by "Sephiroth trees." The Sephirot, collectively, are the ten attributes in which God reveals himself. The names of some of the attributes might sound familiar: Keter, Chokhmah, Binah, Daat, Chesed, Hod, and Malkuth, for example, which become Keterburg, Grand Chokmah, St. Binah, Daath, Chesedonia, and, obviously, Hod and Malkuth. Some of them also have interesting parallel meanings:
  • "Keter" means the divine will to create - Jade is from Keterburg, and that's where he created the first replica
  • "Daat" is the "central state," the unity of the 10 Sephiroth. This makes sense as Daath is sort of like Vatican City - an independent religious city.
  • "Hod" means "withdrawal or surrender," in the positive sense. Hod itself 'withdrew' and 'surrendered' in the negative sense.
  • "Malkuth" means "Kingship" - pretty obvious, as Malkuth is an Empire - though it does have an Emperor, not a King.
  • In addition to this, the word Qliphoth is also stolen from the Sephirot - the Qliphoth is a metaphorical shell around the Sephirot, which both protects it and blocks access to it.
• Kratos, Zelos and Colette in Tales of Symphonia are names adapted from three Greek Gods, Kratos, Zelus and Nike, respectively (apparently the etymological chain is Nike-Nicolette-Colette). This turns out to be significant in many, many ways. Kratos, Zelos and Colette are three party members in possession of angel wings, discounting Lloyd's 11th-Hour Superpower, which makes a lot of sense when you realize the mythological trio are known as winged enforcers.
  • Kratos is the God of strength, power and war. Kratos gets a nod to this in one of his titles, which is "War God."
  • Nike is the Godess of strength, speed and victory. That's probably why it's also the name of a sportswear company.
  • Zelus is probably the most interesting; he's the God of zeal and dedication, but is also associated with rivalry, jealousy and envy. Considering how deeply Zelos envies everyone who isn't Tethe'alla's Chosen, it's pretty appropriate.
  • Altogether, it's interesting because the three characters serve interdependent functions, and all three can be very integral to Lloyd's character. Kratos is his father, Colette is his official love interest and his main motivation, and Zelos acts as a Foil to Colette (as well as the most obvious romantic substitute for Colette if you believe the fangirls) and a Suspiciously Similar Substitute for Kratos. This game knows its stuff.
• The World Ends with You has Yoshiya Kiryu, who tends to go by the nickname "Joshua"—which is derived from the same Hebrew name as "Jesus". At the end of the game, it's revealed that Joshua is the Composer, who is presented by the narrative as a loose allegory for God.
• World of Warcraft: Titanic watchers are often named after Norse gods (Thorim, Freya, Tyr, Loken, etc), although some take names from other mythologies too.
• In the X-Universe, Paranid ships are named for figures from Greek Mythology (Hermes, Medusa, Zeus), as are some Argon ships (Mercury^note okay, that one's technically Roman, Centaur, Minotaur). OTAS ships are named for Greek wind deities and regional winds (Boreas, Mistral, Venti). AGI Task Force ships get names from Norse Mythology (Thor, Skirnir, Valhalla). Yaki ships are named after Japanese Shinto deities and demons (Akuma, Susanowa, Raijin).
• Xenogears plays this trope in many ways:
  • Psychology - Lacan, Id
  • Kabbalah - Zohar, Shevat, Nisan, Merkava, Path of the Sephiroth.
  • Gnosticism - Sophia, Deus, Uruborous.
  • Christianity - Cain, Abel, Fatima, Balthazar, Golgotha.
• The same goes for its spiritual successor, Xenosaga.
  • Christianity - Zohar emulators named after disciples of Jesus. Abel's Ark.
  • Judaism - The mecha driven by Anima Relics are all named after Hebrew patriarchs.
  • Alchemy - Nigredo, Albedo, Citrene, and Rubedo are named after stages of alchemical transfiguration.
  • Jungian psychology - UMN, collective unconscious.
  • Wagner's Nibelung - The Dammerung, the Rhine Maidens.
  • Nietzsche - Each of the game's subtitles is the name of a text by German philosopher Nietzsche.
• Most of the Humongous Mecha controlled by important characters in the Zone of the Enders games are named after Egyptian deities.

Visual Novels

• All three protagonists of the Ace Attorney series have names from classical mythology: Phoenix, Apollo and Athena, respectively. Law in general has a Greek theme in the series, as demonstrated by Professor Aristotle Means (who is modeled after his namesake). Although he is actually corrupt.
• In Bad Faith, fitting in with the Ambiguously Christian nature of the setting, almost every character has a name that has some amount of significance in Judaism or Christianity:
  • Maria is of course, a variation of Mary, which typically refers to Mary, the mother of Jesus, but can also refer to Mary Magdalene.
  • Jael, Maria's friend who is banished in the opening Apologia Assembly of the story, is named after the heroine who delivered Israel from the army of King Jabin in the Hebrew Bible.
  • Eve comes from the figure from the Book of Genesis, said to be the first woman.
  • Amaris is a variation of Amariah, a name that means "promised by God" in Hebrew and features several times in the Hebrew Bible.
  • Grace comes from the concept of "divine grace."
  • Magda comes from Mary Magdalene, a companion of Jesus. This also gives her an extra connection with Maria.
  • Nils comes from "nil," which is just a word for "zero" (coming from their original name "0"), which is sometimes associated with God.
  • Magda decides to rename herself Lilia after fusing with Nils. "Lilia" is the Latin word for lilies, a flower commonly associated with the Virgin Mary, but can also refer to an obscure battle tactic used by the Romans in which spiked pit traps are dug in a quincunx... that is to say, the shape of a cross.
• In Steins;Gate, Okabe has the habit of giving even the most trivial affairs codenames based on Norse mythology. Three of them are central to the story: Operation Urd, Operation Verdandi and Operation Skuld.
• Umineko: When They Cry has quite a few relating to Christianity:
  • Eva, Ange and Lion spell out Evangelion, which means "Gospel", or "Fukuin" in Japanese, which is also the name of the orphanage where the servants are taken from.
  • Beatrice, Virgilia and Clair Vaux of Bernard are all taken from The Divine Comedy. It's commented in the story that Virgilia^note or the character Virgilius that was supposed to appear in a scrapped Episode is meant to guide Dante (represented by Battler) towards Beatrice − i.e. help him figure out her identity and motive.
  • Kyrie's and Ange's names are taken from Christian prayers: Kyrie Eleison and the Angelus.
  • Juza Amakusa shares the same family name (written in the exact same kanji, no less) as the Japanese Christian saint Amakusa Shiro.
  • Maria's name is a direct reference to The Virgin Mary. Discussed in EP7.
  • The names of the Seven Stakes are taken from an old classification of demons and their correspondence to the Seven Deadly Sins.
  • Ronove, Gaap, Furfur and Zepar are all taken from the Ars Goetia.

Webcomics

• Homestuck:
  • Aradia Megido is named after Aradia, a figure who, according to an American folklorist, was worshipped by Tuscan witches, and Tel Megiddo, the place where, according to the Book of Revelation, the Apocalypse will happen and which is the root of the word "armageddon". Aradia is associated with the occult and is obsessed with the end of the universe.
  • Sollux Captor, the Gemini troll, is named after Pollux and Castor, the twins who became the constellation in Greek myth.
  • Kanaya Maryam, the Virgo troll, derives her last name from the Aramaic name for the Virgin Mary, Maryam. Befitting of the matronly and fussy Kanaya.
  • Vriska Serket, the Scorpio troll, is named after Serqet, the Ancient Egyptian scorpion goddess.
  • Equius Zahhak, the Sagittarius troll, is named after the Zoroastrian mythic villain Zahhāk, who was also known as Bēvar Asp, "he who has 10,000 horses", matching Equius' equine Animal Motif
• The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!:
  • Molly named her teddy bear Callisto, after a Greek nymph who was changed into a bear.
  • Molly's clone Galatea is named for Pygmalion's statue who came to life.
• Jupiter-Men: A notable and troublesome gang known as the "Titans" run around in Jupiter-City. They were led by a man named "Cronus" until he was arrested and taken into custody. This is in stark contrast to the name of Jupiter City and its hero, Jupiter-Man, who are named after the Roman counterpart of Zeus, who overthrew the Titans and Cronus in Greek mythology.
• Sleepless Domain: The members of the Classical Elements Ensemble Team Alchemical each have names derived from their element's associated Alchemic Elemental. Sylvia's name comes from the type of wind spirit called a Sylph, Gwen's is from the earth elemental Gnome, Sally's comes from the fiery Salamander, and Undine is named for the water spirit called... well, an Undine. Their leader and fifth element Tessa is an Odd Name Out in this regard — her full name, Tessa Quinn, is instead derived from the word "quintessence".
• S.S.D.D.: One of the Kings was named Arthur and his knights were named Lancelot, Galahad, Bedevere and Tristan.
• Star Impact: Phoebe is named for one of the epithets of Artemis, the Greek goddess of the moon, tying in nicely with her moon-related iconography.

Web Original

• Broken Saints has a number of these, especially with Gabriel, as well as Mars and his cronies Phobos and Deimos.
• In the Dream SMP, members of the Syndicate have codenames based in Greek mythology which allude to their personal characteristics. So far, we have "Protesilaus", "Zephyrus", "Nemesis" "Lethe", and "Harpocrates". At one point, they also had a dog named "Apollo".
• Lifesteal SMP: In Season 4, Ro names the anonymous person turning buildings into obsidian at spawn "Medusa", as an allusion to how Medusa would turn her victims to stone. The team "Perseus" is then created to take down Medusa, like the story goes in Classical Mythology.
• Every main human character in Mandela Catalogue is named after a biblical figure in one way to another as a way to foreshadow their role in the story, from subtle ones such as "Thatcher Davis" and "Jude Murray", to more direct ones like "Adam Murray".

Western Animation

• In Adventures from the Book of Virtues, Plato the bison, Socrates the bobcat, and Aristotle the prairie dog are named after the three famous philosophers of the Greek mythology. Also, Aurora the hawk is named after the Roman goddess of dawn.
• Angels of Jarm: All the four angels have names related to Biblical archangels. Gabrielle is the feminine form of Gabriel, Mick and Rafe are diminutives for respectively, Michael and Raphael, and Ellie has "el", the suffix in many archangels' names.
• The main characters in Archer work for the spy agency ISIS, which shares a name with the goddess-queen from Egyptian Mythology). Its main rival in the early seasons was ODIN, which shares a name with the god-king of Norse Mythology.
• In Barbie: The Pearl Princess, Caligo is named after the Greek mother of Chaos, and Scylla is named after the sea goddess from the Odyssey.
• The three Weird Sisters on Gargoyles are named Luna, Phoebe and Selene. Also, many members of the Avalon Clan (Angela, Gabriel, Michael, Raphael...) have angelic names. (You get the feeling Greg Weisman likes Theme Naming?)
• Jimmy Two-Shoes has Beezy (Beelzebub), Lucius (Lucifer), Jez (Jezebel), Sammy (Samael), and Cerbee (Cerberus), all named after Biblical figures (except Cerberus who is from Greek Mythology).
• Lord Marmoo from Kulipari: An Army of Frogs is named after is named after Kamilaroi God of Evil.
• In Sealab 2021, Captain Shanks and his many brothers are all named after heroes from Greek mythology; Shanks' first name is Bellerophon, and his brothers are Odysseus, Achilles, Perseus, Hercules, and twins Castor and Pollux.

Real Life

• As noted above, religious and mythological theme naming for days of the week is prevalent throughout the world, especially in Europe:
  • In most Germanic languages (including English), four days are named after gods in Germanic paganism. The only one that doesn't follow this is Icelandic, which, except for Sunday and Monday, number their weekdays.
    • Tuesday = Tiw/Tyr. Cognates include: Danish and Norwegian "Tirsdag" and Swedish "Tisdag". But not Dutch "Dinsdag" and German "Dienstag", which are named after, believe it or not, "thing"—in the old Germanic sense of "assembly", as apparently the assemblies of the Germanic peoples met on Tuesdays.^note The word changed over time from an "assembly", to the topic you discuss in it, then just the topic itself—the thing. The original meaning is not lost, however; the legislatures of several Nordic countries have names based on "thing": Iceland has the Althing (All+Thing), Denmark has the Folketing ("People's Thing"), Norway has the Storting ("Great Thing"), and the Faroe Islands (an overseas territory of Denmark) has the Løgting ("Law Thing"). There's even one in a Celtic country—the legislature of the (heavily Norse-influenced) historically Gaelic-speaking Isle of Man is called the "Tynwald" (literally "Thing-field", metonymically using the place where the assembly historically met—in an open field—to refer to the assembly itself). (Obviously, these assemblies no longer meet only on Tuesdays).
    • Wednesday = Woden/Odin. Cognates include: Afrikaans and Dutch "Woensdag" and Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish "Onsdag".
    • Thursday = Thunor/Donar/Thor. Cognates include: Afrikaans and Dutch "Donderdag", Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish "Torsdag", and German "Donnerstag".
    • Friday = Frige/Frija/Frigg. Cognates include: Afrikaans "Vrydag", Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish "Fredag", Dutch "Vrijdag", and German "Freitag".
  • Similarly, Romance languages number their weekdays after gods in Roman paganism. One of them even manages to sneak their way into English and Dutch vocabulary. Again, there is an exception: Portuguese, which, like Icelandic, number their weekdays.
    • Tuesday: Mars, so: French "Mardi", Spanish "Martes", Italian "Martedi", and Romanian "Marți".
    • Wednesday: Mercury, so "Mercredi", Spanish "Miércoles, Italian "Mercoledi, and Romanian "Miercuri".
    • Thursday: Jupiter, so French "Jeudi", Spanish "Jueves", Italian "Giovedi, and Romanian "Joi".
    • Friday: Venus, so French "Vendredi", Spanish "Viernes", Italian "Venerdi", and Romanian "Vineri".
    • Saturday: Actually not Saturn, which only gives it way to English "Saturday", Afrikaans "Saterdag", and Dutch "Zaterdag". Latin once had a Saturn-related word, but for whatever reasons, it didn't stick, since its descendants name the day after Sabbath, which was formerly held on Saturday before it changed to Sunday to coincide with the Lord's Day (it's still on Saturday in Judaism). So it goes: French "Samedi", Spanish "Sábado, Italian "Sabato", and Romanian "Sâmbătă"
  • "Sabbath" itself is actually the norm word for Saturday in many languages not named English. Those that adopted Christianity necessitated the loan of the word to describe the day where you would rest (which by then would already be an artifact due to the whole Lord's Day mentioned above. Christianity technically still differentiates Lord's Day with Sabbath, but how many people know this?), while those cultures that adopted Islam received the word as part of the Arabic loanwords-package (this time, the Sabbath in the Jewish sense is moved to Friday since the religion's founding. Now that word's etymology is harder to track. It might be a legacy of pre-Islamic Arabia, which adopted Judaism and or/Christianity in some places, or it received it the same way that Hebrew did: from Akkadian; they're both Semitic languages, after all.). Examples include: Hungarian "Szombat", Czech "Sobota, Armenian "Shabat'", Tagalog "Sabado", Malay "Sabtu"...
• In Real Life, all the planets and moons as well as most of the asteroids and dwarf planets in the solar system are named after Greek and Roman gods— save for The Moons of Uranus. Those are named for (mostly female) characters from Shakespeare and Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock, e.g.: Miranda, Ophelia, Desdemona, Juliet, Oberon (Shakespeare); Umbriel and Belinda (Pope); and, erm, Ariel (both, as he appeared in The Tempest before showing up as a guardian sylph in The Rape of the Lock—and yes, he, by the way).

  • And Earth. Though in English it's not as clear as those who named it after Terra - and in Greece's case, Gaia.

  • It goes deeper than that. Mars's moons are named after his sons Phobos (Fear) and Deimos (Terror). Jupiter's moons are named for his lovers and daughters (79 and we haven't run out!), Saturn's for Titans^note and as of 2000, giants from other cultures, since we did run out of those, and Neptune's for water divinities.
  • And there are now established rules for surface features on those bodies - for example, craters and crevasses on Jupiter's moon Europa are named after characters and locations in Celtic Mythology, while those on Saturn's moon Phoebe are named after items from the story of Jason and the Argonauts. These can sometimes get a bit funny—for instance, mountains on Saturn's moon Titan are named for mountains in Tolkien's Legendarium, plains on Titan are named for planets from Dune, and many features on Phobos are named for places and characters in Gulliver's Travels. See the planetary nomenclature page on The Other Wiki for details.
    • Features on Venus are named after fertility goddesses from various traditions, such as the mountain Sif Mons, named for Thor's wife Sif.
  • Some of the dwarf planets and minor planets are named after deities from other mythologies. While Pluto, Eris, Ceres, and Orcus are all classical deities, there's also Haumea (Hawaii), Sedna (Inuit), Gonggong (Chinese), Makemake (Easter Island), Quaoar (Native American)...
  • Since there are a lot of asteroids, astronomers looking for names for them began naming them after mythological heroes (which conveniently there are also a lot of). At first semi-accidentally but now by convention, those in Jupiter's L4 and L5 Lagrangian points are named after characters from the Iliad, with those on one side of Jupiter being named for heroes from the Greek side, and those on the other named after heroes from the Trojan side. There are two exceptions from before the convention was established: 624 Hektor (a Trojan) is in the leading "Greek camp" and 617 Patroclus (a Greek) is in the trailing "Trojan camp".
• Many of the elements of the periodic table. From Greek mythology, Helium, Mercury, Tantalum, Niobium, Promethium, and Titanium (along with those named after planets, dwarf planets and asteroids; plus Europe, named after one of Zeus' many flings). From the Norse one, Thorium and Vanadium (Freyja is also known as "Vanadís"). Thulium comes from the mythological island of Thule.
• When the district of New Orleans beyond what is now Lee Circle was laid out in the early 19th century, the streets running perpendicular to the river were named after the nine Muses of Classical Mythology (Calliope, Clio, Erato, Thalia, Melpomene, Terpsichore, Euterpe, Polymnia, Urania). The streets parallel to the river, following two named after ancient Roman buildings (Coliseum, Prytania) whose neoclassical counterparts were never actually built in New Orleans, were originally named Nayades, Apollo, Bacchus, Hercules and Dryades, but most of these names were retired in favor of those of the older streets they extended.
• Happens in the naming of ships from time to time:
  • A series of coastal defence ships built for the Imperial German Navy in the 1890s had names from Germanic mythology: SMS Aegir, SMS Odin, SMS Hagen, SMS Heimdall, SMS Hildebrand, SMS Frithjof, SMS Beowulf, and SMS Siegfried. A series of light cruisers built shortly after had names mostly from Greek mythology: SMS Medusa, SMS Amazone, SMS Ariadne, SMS Thetis, SMS Nymphe, SMS Niobe, and (odd name out) SMS Gazelle.
  • Similarly, the Italian navy went into World War I with, among others, a class of torpedo-boats named after mythological figures - Calliope, Canopo, Cassiopea, Centauro, Clio, Calipso, Pegaso, Perseo etc.
  • The Royal Navy in World War II had three classes of light cruisers named after figures from Greek and Roman mythology, the Leander, Arethusa and Dido Classes.
• Someone at the KGB gave code names from the classics, such as Perseus, Persian, Medusa, Achilles, Aesculapius; and a lowly Ukranian professor was Zeus.

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