The mightiest son of Zeus has many names, but the two most frequently used in modern media are Hercules and Heracles. The simple explanation for this is that the Romans used Hercules, while the Greeks used Heracles (or Herakles). That suffices, but it would not be a Wednesday Classics post if there were not greater depths to explore.
The original name of Herakles was Alkaios, the
name of his paternal grandfather, Alkaios, son of Perseus. This genealogical
connection is why Herakles is sometimes referred to as Alcides, “descendant of Alkaios.”
Herakles’ mortal parents were Amphitryon, son of Alkaios, son of Perseus, and
Alkmena, daughter of Elektryon, son of Perseus. Alkmena’s name shares a root
with Alkaios which indicates strength, because names in myth and legend are
often extremely on the nose. Alkaios, son of Amphitryon, was a target for Hera,
the wife of Zeus. After baby Alkaios strangled the two serpents sent to kill
him in the first days of his infancy, he was renamed Herakles, “glory of Hera,”
in a futile attempt to appease the wrath of Hera by dedicating the baby to her.
That is the mythological background for the name.
Greek is an Indo-European language with a pitch
whose placement is not automatic and a distinction between long and short
vowels. The pitch on the name Heracles appears on the final syllable of the
name; the length pattern of the name was long-short-long, a cretic according to
Greek metrical naming conventions. This name did not fit well into the dactylic
pattern of epic poetry, so alternate names were often used for Heracles in poetry.
The Greeks used the Greek alphabet, which did not have the letter C; Heracles
in Greek is spelled with a K (kappa).
The
Greeks travelled and colonized much of the Mediterranean, including what is now
Italy. In Italy the Greek colonists met the Etruscans, the dominant ethnic
power of northern and mid-Italy. The Latin peoples, the speakers of Old Latin,
were under the power of the Etruscans. The Etruscans borrowed and adapted the
Greek alphabet to write their previously unwritten language.
The Etruscan language was quite different from
the Greek language. The variety of the Greek alphabet which the Etruscans
adopted had three velar sounds: kappa, qoppa, and gamma. Kappa and qoppa were like
a hard C sound in English, although the Etruscans could hear a difference. Gamma
was like a hard G sound in English. The difference between hard C and hard G in
Greek is called voicing; it was something which the Etruscan language lacked.
The result of this lack was that Etruscan heard G as C. At this point, with three
letters for the same or similar sounds, many language adopters would have chosen
one; Etruscan retained all three and distributed them in front of specific vowels.
Qoppa (Q) appeared before U. Kappa (K) appeared before A. C, the gamma which was
now identical in sound to K but had one less stroke, appeared before E. Due to
its slightly easier writing, C gradually annexed the vocalic territories of K,
including before I, the fourth vowel of the Etruscan language.
The speakers of Old Latin learned to write from
the Etruscans. They therefore adopted the three varieties of hard C. Q was
useful because QU was a frequent combination of consonants in Old Latin. Old
Latin did not need both K and C and opted for the simpler of the two – except in
the important time word Kalends and some names. Since C was always an English
hard C, any Greek words with K could be spelled with C.
An alphabet was not all Etruscan and Old Latin
shared. The languages were in a Sprachbund, a kind of linguistic marriage in which
certain features are shared between unrelated languages. One of the features in
the Etruscan-Old Latin Sprachbund was consistent stress (not pitch) on the
first syllable of a word. Herakles, therefore, became Heracle in Etruscan, with
initial syllable stress. A frequent result of initial syllable stress is a
decrease in stress on non-initial syllables to the point that the vowels in those
syllables disappear; thus Heracle became Hercle. This form lasted in Etruscan
until its eventual extinction.
Old Latin, however, did not like this consonant cluster.
Old Latin, unlike Etruscan, was also a member of the Indo-European language
family. Old Latin had long and short vowel lengths, which underwent different
changes in initial and non-initial position. This distinction is why the Latin
verb ‘facio’ has the perfect passive participle ‘factus’, but the same root
with the prefix ‘infacio’ has the perfect passive participle ‘infectus.’ In Old
Latin as well as Etruscan, Heracle became Hercle, but Old Latin broke the
cluster by inserting a vowel to produce Hercules – Old Latin shared many declensions
with Greek and therefore requires the case ending -s to use the name Hercules.
The name Hercules had the same metric value as Heracles; thus this difficulty
remained unresolved.
Latin, the descendent of Old Latin, had a
different set of stress rules, but these happen not to affect the name Hercules.
Although the native name Hercules was preferred, the Greek borrowing Heracles (with
Latin C rather than Greek kappa) was available. Poets were still stuck with an
awkward name – especially because Latin, due to the initial stress period and the
loss of non-initial syllables, had even less short syllables.
When the Western portion of the Empire fell, most
knowledge of Greek was lost, while Latin retained its position as the language
of the church and of administration. The name by which the son of Jupiter, “Jovis
filius,” was known for millennia in the West was Hercules, in accordance with
the use of Latin names for the Greco-Roman gods. This can be confirmed in the
English poetic tradition, which favors initial stress. The Greek names were not
unknown, but not preferred.
In more recent times, however, there was a movement
to use the Greek names, or at least the Latin spelling of the Greek names, of
mythological figures. Heracles became a more common sight than it had been
previously, but it did not displace Hercules in the popular consciousness. The
next step was the restoration of the kappa in the name Herakles. This is most
common in relatively historical or realistic accounts. While Hercules and
Heracles have co-existed for a long time, the use of the name Hercules in the scripture
of the Mouse is an indicator of which name remains preeminent in
English-speaking, and particularly American, popular culture.
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