Names
A perennial source of interest in the Cyclopes, and those mythologically connected with them, has concerned names: for example, Polyphemus, Odysseus, and Galatea, not to mention the word ‘Cyclops’ itself. Such individual investigations cannot be separated from wider questions relating to the ‘speaking names’ of classical mythology; that question in turn involves the crucial distinction between ancient and modern concepts of etymology. This chapter sets some particular issues relating to Cyclopean names against this wider background. After examining successively ‘Cyclops’, ‘Polyphemus’, several other named Cyclopes, ‘Galatea’, and (very briefly) ‘Acis’, Aguirre and Buxton look at issues of naming raised by the Outis episode in Odyssey book 9.