Topic: Your Favorite Mythology Names

We mostly share ours with Ireland to be honest, Finn MacCool and all that. We do have the Kelpies though, and the big statues of them.

@WhiskeyFlamingo Yeah, that's such a shame. SO many pagan stories bastardized into Christian "lore". On the one hand, they were pretty quick to either baptize or behead you, or put you on the stake, but regardless of their disgust of the infidels, they were all too happy to steal their FAR more interesting stories and myths, and change them into things that suited their own narrative. (looking at you, Christmas... )

As for the actual character that King Arthur might be based upon: National Geographic once made a documentary about that, so that should probably float around somewhere on the web or on some streaming service, if you're interested. One of the things I remember from it, is that the name Arthur actually derives from an ancient dialect, meaning "bear" or "son of bear", or something to that extent. It could possibly also explain the real one being clad in bear skins...

Brian sounds like a real-life bad@ss. Too bad that because of the story being so old, and changed/embellished so much, that it'll be hard if not impossible to separate the facts from the fiction.

But that happens often with religion. If you're not too shy about investigating (don't know if you're a religious person, in which case I hope I won't offend too much) then a VERY interesting topic, well: in my opinion at least, is to look into how many "biblical" flood stories there actually are, going back all the way to Sumeria and also occurring in ancient Egypt and in many other countries/regions all over the world. Even down to the details of it all. Same goes for the whole concept of a god and his son, the latter being sacrificed and so forth: all known and easily retrievable from all kinds of reliable online sources.

Of these two examples, there's literally DOZENS of stories preceding Christianity and/or any related religions by many, many centuries. It certainly makes one wonder what the reality of it all is...

Sad fact about Conan's creator Robert E. Howard: he never even lived to see how big of a success his creation has become, because he was a manic depressive and he took his own life at 30.

As for Atlantean culture: yup, that was mainly Robert E. Howard's version of Atlantis, with some additional influences. Most of the influences were all ancient, European civilizations. I did some further searching, and Picts, from ye olde Britannia, were actually also part of the inspiration of some of the many civilizations found within the world of Conan the Barbarian, so perhaps you had a point after all:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyborian_Age

@nessisonett Hey! Don't leave us hanging, there. Kelpies might be familiar territory to you, but it's new to me, and I suspect plenty of others, so if you'd care to elaborate a bit, that would be much appreciated...

@ThanosReXXX Probably the best way to describe them would be…. evil water horses??? They inhabit lakes and then munch on humans that get close. One of the most famous stories usually involves a group of children playing near a lake. They approach the kelpie and their hands get stuck in its mane. One boy cuts his fingers off to escape and survives. The other children’s entrails are found on the lake’s edge. So basically if Pennywise from It was a horse.

@nessisonett Aha, so kind of primeval, and not cool myth at all, then. Still, interesting enough, that I'm going to have to read up on that. Thanks for willing to elaborate.

@nessisonett Kelpies... man, my great-grandmother used to tell me that story about them when I was little... had some lovely nightmares for a while after that haha

@ThanosReXXX Yeah, Brian is often credited with driving the Vikings out of Ireland but they were sort of gone by then anyway. And those who didn't have married into the old Irish bloodlines or became traders and settled.

Nah, no offence here. I used to be Catholic but consider myself Agnostic considering all the crimes committed by the Church here. I don't judge people for believing or having faith in something but for me, my interest in religion is purely on the stories and the history of it. Like you said, how all the stories for different groups have similarities - I find that really interesting. To me it sort of seems people have always been connected in some manner throughout the world, influencing and inspiring others. Or, controlling and dominating others haha!

That's such a shame Howard didn't see how big his story became. I always found that terribly sad, a great artist or writer doesn't learn of their popularity or their eventual appreciation.

Another mythological figure we have is tied to the name Maeve. She was Queen of Connacht and is tied to a story where she started a war with her ex-husband to try and steal his stud bull. She was enemies with Cú Chulainn too.

I've always liked the names Xerxes, Zephyr and Siegfried. They sound really cool, I think.