490–323 BCE), the god’s name had evolved into Hades.įearful of speaking the name of the god of death, the Greeks took to calling Hades by the alternative euphemistic name Plouton, meaning “wealthy.” This other name presumably reflected the fact that the Greeks’ riches, such as crops and precious metals, came from below the earth. Another common poetic alternative was Aidoneus.

The earliest attested form of the name, used in Homeric and Ionic Greek, was Aïdēs.

In antiquity, Hades’ name was generally interpreted as meaning “the unseen” or “the invisible one.” This is a rare case where the original, folk etymology seems to have been correct: modern scholars have traced the name “Hades” to the Proto-Indo-European word * ṇ-uid-, meaning “unseen.” Pronunciation The name had evolved into its more familiar form, Hades (Ἅιδης), by the Classical period (ca. The earliest documented version of the name “Hades” was Aïdēs (Ἀΐδης), used in the Homeric epics the Iliad and the Odyssey (eighth century BCE).

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