Faustulus

Faustulus was the name of the shepherd who found the babies Romulus and Remus in the she-wolf's lair. His name seems to be related to that of Faunus: if a god favet (favours), as Faunus did, he is faustus (lucky), as Faustulus was. Strictly speaking his name is thus a diminutive οι faustus, meaning 'lucky little fellow'.

Flora

Flora was the Roman goddess of flowers ( Latin flos, floris, 'flower'). She was the goddess who was responsible for the flowering of not just flowers but of all things, including plants and trees, and later, sex.

Fortuna

Fortuna was a Roman goddess rather vaguely believed to bring her worshippers good luck, rather as a lucky mascot or Cornish pixy (or pisky) is believed to today. Her name may derive from ferre, 'to bring' or be a version of Vortumna, 'she who turns the year about' (from verto or vorto, Ί turn'). Her Greek equivalent was Tyche.

Furies

Furies (Latin Furiae) were the female spirits of justice and venge­nce. They were said to have been born from the blood of Uranus that fell on Gaia when Cronos castrated him - or according to another version they were the offspring of Nyx.

There are usually three of them: Alecto, Megaera and Tisiphone. They had the effect of sending their victims mad, hence their name, from furor, 'raving', 'madness'.

Cicero and others identified them with a somewhat obscure Roman goddess called Furina or Furrina, who was believed to have had a grove on the banks of the river Tiber in Rome and to have been a kind of goddess of the spring. The Greek name for the Furies was Erinyes.

Gaia

Gaia (or Ge) was the great primeval earth goddess, the first creature to be born from Chaos. The name is simply the Greek for 'earth', which usually appears in the form ge (as in 'geography') but also has the poetic form gaia, used for the name of the goddess, and occasionally aia. In Doric Greek, ge is sometimes da, but this does not seem to be the origin of the name Demeter.

Galanthis

Galanthis (also Galanthias and Galen) was the slave girl of Alcmene. Her name means 'weasel' (galen) into which she was turned by Ilithyia when Galanthis tricked her into thinking that Heracles had been born (which Ilithyia had been trying to prevent).

Galatea

Galatea was the daughter of Nereus and Doris, and as Handel's opera reminds us she was loved by Acis. Galatea lived in the sea off Sicily (where the Cyclops Polyphemus became infatuated by her), and doubtless a combination of this and the fact that she was beautiful is intimated in her name, which means 'milk white', from gala, galactos, 'milk'. (The Greek word gave the English 'galaxy', which in turn derived from the original Greek name for the Milky Way, Cyclos galacticos, literally 'milk circle'.)

Ganymede

Ganymede was the son either of Tros, the founder of Troy, or of Laomedon, the father of the Trojan king Priam. He was a beautiful boy, and according to Homer was abducted by the gods to live as a cup-bearer to Zeus.

His name may well not have been Greek originally, but it must have suggested to a Greek ear ganos, 'beauty', 'delight' and medos. The latter word was used only in the plural (medea) as which it could mean either 'plans', 'cunning' or 'genitals' (in which sense it corresponded to Latin virilia).

So his name means either 'delighting in cunning', or 'rejoicing in manhood' (i.e. in his own prospect of marriage), or even 'with delightful genitals'. (One hardly suspects that the gods abducted him for his cunning.)

His name, in a rather perverse form, gave the Latin Catamitus which in turn produced the English 'catamite' as a word for what Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary somewhat quaintly calls 'a boy kept unnatural purposes'.

Gasterocheires

Gasterocheires was the collective name for the seven Cyclopes who built Argos and Tiryas. It derives from gaster, 'stomach' (as in 'gastric') and cheir, 'hand', presumably referring to their gonk-like appearance, so to speak 'bellies with hands'. They must not be confused with the Hecatoncheires, who were hundred-handed giants.

Geilissa

Geilissa was Orestes' old nurse. According to one story, she sent her own son to bed in the royal nursery so that he would be killed by Aegisthus instead of Orestes (who was then only ten years old). Her name means 'smiler', 'laugher' from gelao, 'to laugh'. This is an attractive name for an old nurse. In other accounts, she is named as Arsinoë or Laodamia.