Okay, I've decided to take the plunge and start ranting posting about certain things that people do in Greek mythology works on AO3 (specifically in the ones focusing on the romance between Patroclos and Achilles) which drive me completely up the wall because they are so very, very wrong. And yes, I do know that these are amateur works posted by fans (indeed, the bulk of my work available online is on AO3, so who could know better than I?), but that does not stop me from being annoyed by it. (And, indeed, it should not stop the authors from taking the time to do a little research before they actually post what they've written. A really good fanfic author makes sure to get things right first, whether that means double-checking the canon work or learning a bit about the culture in which their work is set.)
Some of these things I know come from a specific, highly-publicized, highly-lauded novel (which I personally have not read, so I'm not sure how many of the others also came from it), but I probably won't get to those things until the second post (trying to keep it to a few things per post, all revolving around a specific theme), so I won't mention the novel in question until I get there.
Today's primary beef is the way so many of the authors use patronymics as direct equivalents of modern last names. And I don't mean in introductions, as that's one of the only places it might be used in an equivalent manner. No, I mean using both their name and their patronymic for emphasis. As in, a modern mother might yell at her son "John Smith, you get back here this instant!" to really hammer home how angry she is at him.
No one would ever do that with a patronymic in Ancient Greece.
The two do not serve the same function. And, more importantly, that whole thing of adding the last name for emphasis is a cultural thing. It's something people in the US do, yes. Probably in the other English-speaking countries as well. (I'm drawing a blank on whether or not I've seen anyone do that in any of the British TV and movies I've watched over the years...ooh, no, I just recalled Gandalf doing that with both Sam and Pippin in Fellowship of the Ring (don't remember offhand if the either line was in the book, though) so...yeah, probably there in all English-speaking countries.) I find it highly improbable that people do that in every non-Anglophone country in the modern world, however. The more different the language, the more different the culture, the higher chance that it doesn't happen, it seems to me. And that's despite that there is a growing world subculture low-key blending everyone's reactions and behaviors. (If I was only close to someone from modern Greece, I'd ask if people even do that last-name-for-emphasis thing there now, because I feel like the answer would probably be "no." Unfortunately, I'm not. I do know of one person in a few game dev Discord servers who's from Greece, but I don't know him well enough to ask such a weird and random question. Don't really know him at all, in fact.)
And if not everyone now does that, is there any reason to think people three thousand years ago did it?
Answer: no, there absolutely is not.
More importantly, the last name and the patronymic serve radically different functions. The last name is something passed down from generation to generation, identifying the larger group to which you belong. The closest ancient equivalent would be the gens name in ancient Rome, but the behavior regarding the gens name is radically different: unless you were really close to someone, you spoke to or about them using their gens name, possibly adding their praenomen on the front if there was any concern that someone might be confused as to which member of the family you were talking about, or using their cognomen if they have one. (Roman names are very complicated. I would have to give them a full post of their own to explain them, but I'm sure the information is already posted online in many places, all of them better than any explanation I could provide.)
As to the patronymic, it's not passed down from generation to generation. (With the occasional oddity, like Achilles sometimes being referred to as Aiakides in the Iliad, which means "son of Aiakos," and is technically his father's patronymic. Aiakides, therefore, could function like a modern last name, since it's more referring to the founder of his line of descent from Zeus.) It specifically identifies the father of the person in question. The patronymic is specifically designed to be used both to identify the father and the son, thus its primary use in epic is actually in place of the character's name. Atreides, "son of Atreus," is probably the most famous and commonly used (outside of the Iliad), and could be applied to both Agamemnon and Menelaos, though I think it was mostly just used for Agamemnon. It sets the tone of expectations for a person: by identifying Agamemnon as Atreides, the poet could signify in a single word that he had a dark and bloody past and would have a dark and bloody future (Atreus was murdered by a tag-team of his brother and his brother's son/grandson (product of father-daughter rape), Agamemnon murdered the uncle in question and would later be himself murdered by the cousin in question), by identifying Achilles as Aiakides, the poet could instantly remind the listener/reader of his glorious ancestor who went on to be one of the judges of the underworld and thus signal Achilles' glorious present and his future as a minor god of the dead (though actually I'm not sure if he'd been deified yet when the Iliad was composed), and by identifying Patroclos as Menoitiades the poet could signal that he was from dependable heroic stock who never actually achieved any great or lasting fame (though really his name kind of already signals that, as only the most arrogant or the most insignificant would ever name their son "glory of the father," depending on whether they meant "product of my own glory" or "son who is my only chance of ever getting any glory").
Now, there are cases where it's reasonable to put the patronymic directly after the name, as if it was a normal last name. For example, in my books, I have Eurysakes frequently identify himself as "son of Aias Telamoniades." This is for the very sensible reason that there were two men named Aias who were of great note in the Trojan War: one was the bulwark of the Achaians and the original tank character, while the other was a mean-spirited little man who literally got most of the Greek army killed on the way home from Troy. As the son of the former, Eurysakes does not want to risk anyone thinking he's the son of the latter!
That's not the purpose of these people just sticking a patronymic on at the back of the character's name, though. They're going for the "I just can't believe you, John Smith, you rogue!" thing.
And. That. Is. Not. Right.
It drives me insane.
And, in a deeply-related note, considering the character who's been the butt of that behavior...
ACHILLES' PATRONYMIC IS NOT PELIDES!!!!!!!!!!!
Sorry to shout, but....AARRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!!
I mean, what do they think his father's name is?
Pelos? Peles?
Because that's what "Pelides" would mean. Son of Pelos or son of Peles.
Neither of which, to the best of my knowledge, was ever an ancient Greek name.
Achilles' patronymic is Peleides. Or sometimes Peleades, depending on the metrical needs of the line in question. But that second "e" is deeply important, because his father's name is Peleus, not Peles or Pelos.
I mean, really, what do these people think the patronymic for "son of Pelias" would be? Or rather, if they think that "son of Peleus" is "Pelides" then how do they think anyone would tell "son of Peleus" from "son of Pelias," since by their logic they would both be the same thing?
Is it that they just don't think? Are they so ignorant of Greek mythology that they've never heard of Pelias? Have the only encountered patronymics in one novel that got them so drastically wrong that a) they misspelled Achilles' patronymic and b) used it like a last name and c) didn't even use any others? Do they just not care that they're 100% wrong?
.
..
...
Yeah.
Sorry.
That just really freaking bothers me. Especially since every time I've run into the first problem, it's been a double-whammy with the second one.
Sometimes makes me want to bash my head into a wall.
(Needless to say, I actually gave up on trying to read Patroclos/Achilles fics on AO3 a long time ago, but the frustration has been lingering and festering ever since, so I'm trying to purge it.)
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