Expert: Maria - 3/27/2007

Question
I have a strange question. I have always loved Greek mythology and when I bought a cat that is described as a cat of the gods, I named her Andromeda. She recently have her first litter and we named her kitten after Greek gods too. I have to come up with a name for our cattery. I want to name it Andromeda (family or clan) I want to know if there was a name that the Greek gods use for family, such as clan is use with the Scottish?

Thank-you for your help.

Answer
Hello,

Generally speaking, there is in ancient Greek a noun which was used to indicate mainly a race and then also a clan, a house, a family, but it did not refer to the Greek Gods at all.
Anyway, such a  noun was “ghénos”.

Therefore if you want to say “The clan of Andromeda”, you can say: “Andromédas ghénos”.

In fact ANDROMEDAS in the genitive means 'of Andromeda', while GHENOS in the nominative means 'clan, family'.

Finally I have to point out that Andromeda was not a goddess,as you certainly know, but simply the daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia, king and queen of Ethiopia. She became the wife of Perseus after she was rescued just by Perseus, the son of Zeus and Danae. Perseus in fact killed the sea monster that threatened  Andromeda chained naked to a rock by the sea by order of Poseidon.( See the myth of Andromeda).

Best regards,
Maria
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Please note that “Andromédas ghénos” is a Latin transliteration of the Greek letters as the system does not allow the use of the Greek alphabet and diacritic marks.