n their use of names. And this is
not the only truth about philology which may be learnt from Homer. Does
he not say that Hector's son had two names--

'Hector called him Scamandrius, but the others Astyanax'?

Now, if the men called him Astyanax, is it not probable that the
other name was conferred by the women? And which are more likely to be
right--the wiser or the less wise, the men or the women? Homer evidently
agreed with the men: and of the name given by them he offers an
explanation;--the boy was called Astyanax ('king of the city'), because
his father saved the city. The names Astyanax and Hector, moreover, are
really the same,--the one means a king, and the other is 'a holder or
possessor.' For as the lion's whelp may be called a lion, or the horse's
foal a foal, so the son of a king may be called a king. But if the
horse had produced a calf, then that would be called a calf. Whether the
syllables of a name are the same or not makes no difference, provided
the meaning is retained. For example; the names of letters, whether
vowels or consonants, do not correspond to their sounds, with the
exception of epsilon, upsilon, omicron, omega. The name Beta has three
letters added to the sound--and yet this does not alter the sense of the
word, or prevent the whole name having the value which the legislator
intended. And the same may be said of a king and the son of a king,
who like other animals resemble each other in the course of nature;
the words by which they are signified may be disguised, and yet amid
differences of sound the etymologist may recognise the same notion, just
as the physician recognises the power of the same drugs under different
disguises of colour and smell. Hector and Astyanax have only one letter
alike, but they have the same meaning; and Agis (leader) is altogether
different in sound from Polemarchus (chief in war), or Eupolemus (good
warrior); but the two words present the same idea of leader or general,
like the words Iatrocles and Acesimbrotus, which equally denote a
physician. The son succeeds the father as the foal succeeds the horse,
but when, out of the course of nature, a prodigy occurs, and the
offspring no longer resembles the parent, then the names no longer
agree. This may be illustrated by the case of Agamemnon and his son
Orestes, of whom the former has a name significant of his patience at
the siege of Troy; while the name of the latter indicates his savage,
man-of-the-mountain