Hercules or Heracles? Latin & Ancient Greek Pronunciation of Greco-Roman Heroes

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How do you pronounce the names of the great Heroes and Heroines of Greek and Roman Mythology? Is his name Hercules or Heracles? Who is Ulisses and why is he mascarding as Odysseus? Learn the original pronunciation of these names in this video.

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Intro and outro music: Overture of Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) by Mozart

#hercules #latin #greek

00:00 Intro
01:09 Herclus vs Heracles
06:42 Achilles
07:46 Menelaus
08:52 Agamemnon
09:37 Helen
10:30 Paris
11:53 Hector
13:31 Odysseus
16:20 Aeneas
17:25 Atalanta
18:40 Bellerophon
19:15 Perseus
19:46 Ajax
20:52 Theseus
21:43 Hecate
23:51 Bird of All Sizes

[polyMATHY_Luke]

Take the StoryLearning 10-DAY CHALLENGE; for a modest price, you can try out any of the StoryLearning courses here:

How do you pronounce the names of the great Heroes and Heroines of Greek and Roman Mythology? Is his name Hercules or Heracles? Who is Ulisses and why is he mascarding as Odysseus? Learn the original pronunciation of these names in this video.


🦂 Support my work on Patreon:

📚 Luke Ranieri Audiobooks:

🤠 Take my course LATIN UNCOVERED on StoryLearning, including my original Latin adventure novella "Vir Petasātus"

🦂 Sign up for my Latin Pronunciation & Conversation series on Patreon:

☕ Support my work with PayPal:

And if you like, do consider joining this channel:



🏛 Ancient Greek in Action · Free Greek Lessons:

👨‍🏫 My Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata playlist · Free Latin Lessons:

🦂 ScorpioMartianus (my channel for content in Latin, Ancient Greek, & Ancient Egyptian)

🎙 Hundreds of hours of Latin & Greek audio:

🌍 polýMATHY website:

🌅 polýMATHY on Instagram:

🦁 Legio XIII Latin Language Podcast:

👕 Merch:


📖 My book Ranieri Reverse Recall on Amazon:

Intro and outro music: Overture of Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) by Mozart

#hercules #latin #greek

00:00 Intro
01:09 Herclus vs Heracles
06:42 Achilles
07:46 Menelaus
08:52 Agamemnon
09:37 Helen
10:30 Paris
11:53 Hector
13:31 Odysseus
16:20 Aeneas
17:25 Atalanta
18:40 Bellerophon
19:15 Perseus
19:46 Ajax
20:52 Theseus
21:43 Hecate
23:51 Bird of All Sizes

[rafaelbastos]

A video on the pronunciation of the roman emperors' names would be cool as well.

[faryafaraji]

5:08 Love this point. It's why when people ask me how Farya is pronounced, I tell them to say it however they want, because defining a "correct" pronunciation seems exceedingly arbritrary to me. The name is Portuguese, but the root of it is (allegedly) φάρος. So is the correct pronunciation Portuguese? Greek? Persian because it's the lingua franca of my birth country? Mazandarani because it's my mother language? French because it's my main language of use? It's a pandora's box

[JoK]

I discovered this channel 5 years ago when I was studying Latin in school. The videos have given me a new perspective because they rather focus on speaking Latin while my Latin class in school was all about translating and reading Ovid and Cicero.
I finished school years ago but sometimes I come back here :)

[magorzatac]

In Polish, we pronounce these names almost exactly like in classical Latin: Herkules, Hera, Achilles, Alkmena, Helena... Some of them have specifically Polish endings: Odyseusz or Tezeusz :)

[LandgraabIV]

12:45 in Spanish both "Héctor" and "doctor" seem to be either borrowed or semi-learned words because of the "ct". In Portuguese they are "Heitór" and "doutór" (acute to show stress), from the Latin accusative.

[ChaconnesAreFunPlay]

I think a video on the traditional English pronunciation of Latin would be fun!

[frenchfriar]

One of my favorite "Greek" names belonged to my great grandmother (who was *not* Greek).

Her name was Parthena, and she seems to have been called "Thena" for short.

I've always thought that Parthena was such a pretty name.

[krupam]

Oh, I definitely share thoughts about Luwian. As someone very interested in Proto-Indo-European, there are some interesting things going that could make or break some of our reconstructions if only we had more data.
Funnily enough, it was also the first time that I heard the word "Luwian" being pronounced out loud. The English spelling pronunciation of "uwi" could really go any way.

[corinna]

I rewatched "Tombstone" a couple of days ago, and I just had a thought that maybe you could make a video on the scene where Doc Holliday and Johnny Ringo very briefly speak a few sentences in Latin.

[gav]

Great video. Surprised you didn't mention the etymology of Heracles, considering it's probably the best established of these, and kind of snarky even.

As a sidenote, have you ever heard of the movie "Illyricvm" from 2022? It's a Croatian production that's completely in Latin, as well as bits of reconstructed (or rather, pretty much wholly constructed) Illyrian. Something that'd fit in your "how good is their Latin" series.

[ImmanuelTheKing]

I did not know the actual etymology of the French Paris!! Mind-blowing!!!

[animefreak]

Can we perhaps have one about Greek philosophers and mathematicians?

[dpassante]

I’m really happy to have found your channel, I’m going to be studying classics and I’m taking an Ancient Greek language class in the spring

[ImmanuelTheKing]

Beautiful, gorgeous, magnificent etymological video. Ἡδέως ἐποίησας ὡς αιεἶ, ὦ ἄριστε!

[ImmanuelTheKing]

The Doric etymology for many Greek names in Latin is nothing short of fascinating.

[armandfleming]

I would love to watch more of these videos. I'm looking forward to what comes next.

[yuramejimenez]

In spanish:
Hércules
Alcmena
Anfitrión
Sócrates
Aquiles
Menelao
Agamenón
Elena / Helena
Paris
Héctor
Andrómaca
Odiseo / Ulises
Eneas
Jasón
Atalanta
Belerofonte
Quimera
Medusa
Perseo
Áyax
Orfeo
Teseo
Ariadna / Ariadne
Hécate

[Kosta]

Hi, greek here... dude i have to say I love your videos, even your accent ist on point (most of the times) I even get to learn some things I didn't know 😂 only thing you could improve a little is your pronunciation, but it's already so good that you would need a native speaker to help you so you can still improve on that... so it's kind of unnessecary, you're already really good!

[SomasAcademy]

I'd be interested in one of these just for the characters of the Odyssey; beyond the titular hero and some of the gods and figures from the Trojan War story you've already covered, we've got names like Penelope, Telemachus, Eurylochus, Nausicaa, Calypso, Polyphemus, Circe, Scylla, Charybdis, and many more.