ANNE HECHE’S ATLAS JOINS THE PANTHEON OF STARBABY GODS & GODDESSES

ANNE HECHE’S ATLAS JOINS THE PANTHEON OF STARBABY GODS & GODDESSES

Yesterday we got the news flash that Anne Heche named her son Atlas and last week we learned that Erykah Badu chose Mars for her baby girl. Do we smell the beginnings of a trendlet?

Yes,  some celebrity parents do seem to be intent on making little gods and goddesses–instant objects of worship– of their infants right from the get-go.  Names that were previously considered too powerful for a baby to bear (after all, Atlas did carry the weight of the heavens on his shoulders, and Mars was the Roman god of war) now seem to have descended from Mt. Olympus into the realm of mortal possibility.

Of course, Atlas and Mars aren’t the first mythic starbabies. Others include:

AURORA —   Nancy McKeon

CALLIOPE —  Patricia Arquette (middle name)

CASTOR —  James Hetfield

GAIA —  Emma Thompson

HERMESKelly Rutherford

ICARUSLucy Sykes (middle name)

JUNO —  Will Champion

LUNA —  Constance Marie

ORION —  Chris Noth

And there are lots of other names of ancient Greek and Roman gods, goddesses and muses that could work for a contemporary American baby, some of which are still commonly used in Greece, such as:

GODDESSES

APHRODITE

ARIADNE

ARTEMIS

ASTRA

ATALANTA

ATHENA

CERELIA

CLIO

DELIA

DEMETER

ELARA

JANA

LYSSA

MAIA

MINERVA

NIKE

PERSEPHONE

SELENE

TERRA

THALASSA

THALIA

THEA

VENUS

GODS

ACHILLES

ADONIS

AEOLUS

AGON

AJAX (beware the foaming cleanser)

APOLLO

AQUILO

ARES

CADMUS

HELIOS

JOVE

JUPITER

MERCURY

POSEIDON

SILVANUS

TRITON

VULCAN

ZEPHYR

ZEUS

About the Author

Linda Rosenkrantz

Linda Rosenkrantz

Linda Rosenkrantz is the co-founder of Nameberry, and co-author with Pamela Redmond of the ten baby naming books acknowledged to have revolutionized American baby naming. You can follow her personally at InstagramTwitter and Facebook. She is also the author of the highly acclaimed New York Review Books Classics novel Talk and a number of other books.