Interesting piece of news. If you look up the keywords “Occult Baby Names” on Amazon, due mostly to the “feature” that allows you to search excerpts, you get 6665 results under books. So close…Now, ask me my opinion on Amazon’s new Search including excerpts…
Remember a long time ago, how it happened that I couldn’t find the baby book entry for Adam that showed the Slavic variation Adamek which led me to name Athamek? I never did locate it. I suspect I dreamed it.
Well, being a Classicist (sort of) I decided that a good name for a character who drowned an came back as something else might be Helle. Helle isn’t the only character in Greek mythology who drowned. She didn’t have to be Helle. I just remembered that name at random from my mythology class and knew that she had fallen off the back of the animal carrying her to safety. I had the vague notion that she had something to do with the Golden Fleece.
I looked her up. Here is a summary of what I found. Would you look at who her father is???
Helle was the daughter of King Athamus of Thessaly and Nephele. After Nephele died Athamus took another wife, Ino, who mistreated the Helle and her brother Phrixus.
One night she tried to kill the children, but mistaken killed her own son and daughter instead. She blamed the children’s nurse for the crime and bribed messengers from Delphi to tell Athamus that Phrixus and Helle must be sacrificed.
When the children were taken to the temple, a large golden ram rescued them and carried them away. Somewhere on this journey, Helle began to feel dizzy and she fell off of the ram’s back and was drowned in the Hellespont.
Phrixus eventually arrived in Colchis, sacrificed the ram to Zeus (rather ungrateful to the poor ram, I thought), and married the King’s daughter. The ram’s fleece was the Golden Fleece of Jason and the Argonauts fame.