# Which Olympian gods and goddesses ( and demi-god offspring) are accepted as imports into Greek myth?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-olympian-gods-and-goddesses-and-demi-god-offspring-are-accepted-as-imports-into-greek-myth/852801>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 29, 2020, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-olympian-gods-and-goddesses-and-demi-god-offspring-are-accepted-as-imports-into-greek-myth/852801 "2020-04-29T10:19:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![PlaceboTarget](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/placebotarget/32/1073_2.png) [@PlaceboTarget](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlaceboTarget)\
**Post date:** [April 30, 2020, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-olympian-gods-and-goddesses-and-demi-god-offspring-are-accepted-as-imports-into-greek-myth/852801/21 "2020-04-30T13:40:06Z")

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> [@GreysonCarlisle](#):
>
> The titans were likely imports. Oceanus and Tethys, especially.

Why not deities that used to be revered but had become obsolete?

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**Author:** ![GreysonCarlisle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@GreysonCarlisle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreysonCarlisle)\
**Post date:** [April 30, 2020, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-olympian-gods-and-goddesses-and-demi-god-offspring-are-accepted-as-imports-into-greek-myth/852801/22 "2020-04-30T14:30:27Z")

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> [@PlaceboTarget](#):
>
> Why not deities that used to be revered but had become obsolete?

That was the idea for a long time–that the titans were the original gods of Greece before the Indo-Europeans moved in–but I think that’s been mostly discarded.

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**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\
**Post date:** [April 30, 2020, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-olympian-gods-and-goddesses-and-demi-god-offspring-are-accepted-as-imports-into-greek-myth/852801/23 "2020-04-30T15:42:48Z")

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> [@Morgyn](#):
>
> Yeah, but while the various city states grew to share a common culture, they started separately and politically remained separate states. I’d expect that they also started out with their own deities before their cultures more or less merged into what we now call the culture of ancient Greece.
> 
> (NB: I am not an historian nor an anthropologist of any sort. This is just my probably ill-informed opinion.)

It’s a reasonable guess - and one I share in broad strokes - but the honest truth is that we really don’t know. Some of the linguistic evidence shows that many of these deities are very, _very_ old - as in the example of Zeus, which probably dates back to around six thousands years ago, far older than writing itself.

One issue with answering the OP is that it’s hard to even identify exactly what you mean by “Greek”. Does the Homeric era count (that is, after the Bronze Age Collapse), or the Minoans, or only the Classical era? The people/s involved were not ethnically or culturally _identical_ but what we think of as “Greek” came from them.

This also makes a couple weird aspects. Poseidon was likely the chief deity in the Ancient era, although that’s still something of a best-guess. At some point, people started think that Pan and Hermes were different gods, or maybe Pan’s cult stayed local while the new “Hermes” spread more easily. And even when gods or religion didn’t change much, the description and visions of them tended to follow the larger culture. For a simple example, many “Greek” deities had decidedly unwarlike aspects; but the for the Romans _every_ god was a war god.

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**Author:** ![PlaceboTarget](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/placebotarget/32/1073_2.png) [@PlaceboTarget](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlaceboTarget)\
**Post date:** [April 30, 2020, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-olympian-gods-and-goddesses-and-demi-god-offspring-are-accepted-as-imports-into-greek-myth/852801/24 "2020-04-30T19:45:48Z")

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> [@GreysonCarlisle](#):
>
> That was the idea for a long time–that the titans were the original gods of Greece before the Indo-Europeans moved in–but I think that’s been mostly discarded.

I find it hard to believe.

Although scattered geographically, the Greeks were a group characterized by a strong cultural identity - so strong that they came up with the term “barbarians” to name all the populations around them who did not seem to live up to their societal standards.

Hesiod elaborated on the Greek pantheon and showed that the first deities were born from Chaos. One of the first deities was Gaia (Terra, in the Roman mythology). Gaia gave birth to a wide range of children, the twelve Titans being some of the most important.

The Olympians, whose ruler was Zeus, come from two Titans, Chronos and his wife. Although the number of gods was higher, the Greek’s ideal for the number of Olympian deities was twelve as well. This pattern and evolution demonstrate, in my opinion, the Greek origin of both the Titans and the Olympian gods.

I don’t think someone could come up with a cultural mechanism that would have caused the Greeks to include twelve barbarian deities in their mythology, and assign them a primordial role in their religious cosmology. Greek historians such as Hesiod and Herodotus of Heraclea mention both the Titans and the Olympian gods as important deities in the traditional Greek pantheon. I am not aware of any reliable source that would suggest otherwise.

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**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\
**Post date:** [April 30, 2020, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-olympian-gods-and-goddesses-and-demi-god-offspring-are-accepted-as-imports-into-greek-myth/852801/25 "2020-04-30T21:03:49Z")

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There is a family of languages called Indo-European. A reasonably good reconstruction of a language spoken something like six thousand years ago has been made, and it’s referred to as Proto-Indo-European. All the more than a thousand Indo-European languages today are descended from that language. Those languages have, of course, changed in many different ways. Over their history, they each have borrowed words from other Indo-European languages and from languages in other language families.

The same thing is true of the mythology of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The reconstruction of that mythology is not as clear and certain as the reconstruction of the language. You can read about this mythology in the following article. There has similarly been much borrowing of gods and stories from other Indo-European and non-Indo-European groups:

> **[Proto-Indo-European mythology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_mythology)**
>
> Pontic Steppe
> Caucasus
> East Asia
> Eastern Europe

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**Author:** ![GreysonCarlisle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@GreysonCarlisle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreysonCarlisle)\
**Post date:** [April 30, 2020, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-olympian-gods-and-goddesses-and-demi-god-offspring-are-accepted-as-imports-into-greek-myth/852801/26 "2020-04-30T22:50:09Z")

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> [@PlaceboTarget](#):
>
> I find it hard to believe.
> 
> Although scattered geographically, the Greeks were a group characterized by a strong cultural identity - so strong that they came up with the term “barbarians” to name all the populations around them who did not seem to live up to their societal standards.  
> …  
> I don’t think someone could come up with a cultural mechanism that would have caused the Greeks to include twelve barbarian deities in their mythology, and assign them a primordial role in their religious cosmology. Greek historians such as Hesiod and Herodotus of Heraclea mention both the Titans and the Olympian gods as important deities in the traditional Greek pantheon. I am not aware of any reliable source that would suggest otherwise.

I believe that Roger Woodard proposes the importation claim in _The Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology_.

But you’ll notice that most of the titans stay in the underworld. The bad place. Where horrors live.

I can imagine the Indo-Europeans moving through foreign lands and hearing the tales of the indigenous gods. Not willing to risk wrath from these foreign deities, they incorporated them into their mythology. But, definitely unwilling to risk the wrath of their own gods, they placed them in the underworld, eventually referring to them as “former gods.”

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**Author:** ![PlaceboTarget](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/placebotarget/32/1073_2.png) [@PlaceboTarget](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlaceboTarget)\
**Post date:** [May 1, 2020, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-olympian-gods-and-goddesses-and-demi-god-offspring-are-accepted-as-imports-into-greek-myth/852801/27 "2020-05-01T04:59:50Z")

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> [@GreysonCarlisle](#):
>
> I believe that Roger Woodard proposes the importation claim in _The Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology_.
> 
> But you’ll notice that most of the titans stay in the underworld. The bad place. Where horrors live.
> 
> I can imagine the Indo-Europeans moving through foreign lands and hearing the tales of the indigenous gods. Not willing to risk wrath from these foreign deities, they incorporated them into their mythology. But, definitely unwilling to risk the wrath of their own gods, they placed them in the underworld, eventually referring to them as “former gods.”

When it comes to history, one’s imagination is limited by written sources and archeological discoveries or the lack of such evidence.

I am curious about Roger Woodard’s arguments. Does he mention the people(s) that the Greeks could have borrowed the Titans from? Has he identified those deities in their original cultural environment and established adequate correspondences?

In general, a massive import of deities who should hold such an important position in some religious cosmology could only happen as a result of a long-lasting or/and dramatic contact with other populations. The group of Titans in the Greek mythology could have only been borrowed from the populations that they interacted with over long periods, such as the Hittites, the Phoenicians, or the Egyptians. But this is not documented, despite the presence of other important cultural influences.

Rather than importing from lurking, unknown populations, the Greeks imposed their own pantheon on the rest of the civilizations in the area (such as the Romans). Without evidence to the contrary, any theory remains sheer speculation in my opinion.

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**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\
**Post date:** [May 1, 2020, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-olympian-gods-and-goddesses-and-demi-god-offspring-are-accepted-as-imports-into-greek-myth/852801/28 "2020-05-01T06:56:10Z")

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Who lived in Greece before the Indo-European speaking Greeks arrived? What gods did they worship?

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**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\
**Post date:** [May 1, 2020, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-olympian-gods-and-goddesses-and-demi-god-offspring-are-accepted-as-imports-into-greek-myth/852801/29 "2020-05-01T08:18:59Z")

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There were speakers of proto-Greek in Greece fifteen centuries before the time of Homer and Hesiod. When Dorian Greeks migrated from the North, they encountered the remnants of Mycenaean Greeks. Hesiod wrote about the struggle between Titans and Gods and one might imagine that the Titans were, at least vaguely, associated with the Gods of an earlier culture, but was that culture the Mycenaeans? Or the Pelasgians (non-Hellenic people)? Thus “borrowed” Gods, like the Titans who fathered the Olympians, were likely borrowed from earlier generations of Greek speakers.

Have Linear B inscriptions been deciphered well enough to show myths or names of Gods? I think Hittite and Egyptian Kings corresponded with, or wrote about, the Mycenaeans — any evidence there?

> [@PlaceboTarget](#):
>
> Hesiod elaborated on the Greek pantheon and showed that the first deities were born from Chaos. One of the first deities was Gaia (Terra, in the Roman mythology). Gaia gave birth to a wide range of children, the twelve Titans being some of the most important.
> 
> The Olympians, whose ruler was Zeus, come from two Titans, Chronos and his wife…

Nitpick: Zeus’s father’s name was spelled with a different Greek letter, so is rendered in English without the ‘h’ as Kronos, Cronos or Cronus. **Chronos** — who posts right here at SDMB! — is Primordial Time, father of afore-mentioned Chaos, and thus an ancestor of Cronus the Titan.

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**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\
**Post date:** [May 1, 2020, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-olympian-gods-and-goddesses-and-demi-god-offspring-are-accepted-as-imports-into-greek-myth/852801/30 "2020-05-01T08:37:37Z")

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> [@gdave](#):
>
> Dionysus is the single Olympian god that I see most often cited as an import. (Caveat: I am NOT an expert on this). As I understand it, of all of the Olympian gods, Dionysus has the best evidence as a deity that was “imported” into the Greek belief system as a wholly novel deity.

I came in here because I thought someone might mention him. But that is apparently old news, and his name is found quite early on, from Mycenaean Greek, which actually came before before what we call Ancient Greece. It’s just that he was disfavored, as he was originally more a god of the underclass. He underwent a metamorphosis that made him harmless to the powers that be, which allowed him back in.

I could try to say more, but I would really just be further summarizing [Overly Sarcastic Production’s video on Dionysus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5brAr51ip_k) (around 5 minutes in for not being an import god). As Red says, she expected a much more simple case, but found that it goes back deep. She even covers a version of Dionysus who is halfway between the transition.

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**Author:** ![PlaceboTarget](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/placebotarget/32/1073_2.png) [@PlaceboTarget](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlaceboTarget)\
**Post date:** [May 1, 2020, 9:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-olympian-gods-and-goddesses-and-demi-god-offspring-are-accepted-as-imports-into-greek-myth/852801/31 "2020-05-01T09:02:48Z")

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> [@septimus](#):
>
> Nitpick: Zeus’s father’s name was spelled with a different Greek letter, so is rendered in English without the ‘h’ as Kronos, Cronos or Cronus. **Chronos** — who posts right here at SDMB! — is Primordial Time, father of afore-mentioned Chaos, and thus an ancestor of Cronus the Titan.

Apparently it is a conflation that the ancient Greeks themselves committed regularly. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve always regarded them as being one and the same. Thank you for the clarification.

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**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\
**Post date:** [May 1, 2020, 9:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-olympian-gods-and-goddesses-and-demi-god-offspring-are-accepted-as-imports-into-greek-myth/852801/32 "2020-05-01T09:38:57Z")

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Poking around, the only Greek god/goddess that I’ve found who seems to be generally accepted as not Greek in origin is [Aphrodite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphrodite).

> [@](#):
>
> Aphrodite’s name is generally accepted to be of non-Greek, probably Semitic, origin,[6] but its exact derivation cannot be determined.[6]  
> …  
> The cult of Aphrodite in Greece was imported from, or at least influenced by, the cult of Astarte in Phoenicia,[21][22][23][24] which, in turn, was influenced by the cult of the Mesopotamian goddess known as “Ishtar” to the East Semitic peoples and as “Inanna” to the Sumerians.[25][23][24] Pausanias states that the first to establish a cult of Aphrodite were the Assyrians, followed by the Paphians of Cyprus and then the Phoenicians at Ascalon. The Phoenicians, in turn, taught her worship to the people of Cythera.[26]

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**Author:** ![PlaceboTarget](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/placebotarget/32/1073_2.png) [@PlaceboTarget](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlaceboTarget)\
**Post date:** [May 1, 2020, 9:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-olympian-gods-and-goddesses-and-demi-god-offspring-are-accepted-as-imports-into-greek-myth/852801/33 "2020-05-01T09:59:20Z")

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> [@Alessan](#):
>
> Who lived in Greece before the Indo-European speaking Greeks arrived? What gods did they worship?

The Greek civilization emerged after the fall of the Mycenaean one. There was no reason for the Greeks to adopt any of the gods that had controlled the fate of a vanishing population.

Also, there isn’t archaeological evidence that the Greeks were supposed to fight any invasions in the archaic period of their settlements. The only aggression they faced was that of other Greek tribes.

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**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\
**Post date:** [May 1, 2020, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-olympian-gods-and-goddesses-and-demi-god-offspring-are-accepted-as-imports-into-greek-myth/852801/34 "2020-05-01T10:10:12Z")

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> [@PlaceboTarget](#):
>
> The Greek civilization emerged after the fall of the Mycenaean one. There was no reason for the Greeks to adopt any of the gods that had controlled the fate of a vanishing population.
> 
> Also, there isn’t archaeological evidence that the Greeks were supposed to fight any invasions in the archaic period of their settlements. The only aggression they faced was that of other Greek tribes.

I don’t think there’s that clear-cut a distinction between “Greek” and “Mycenaean”, is there? The language of the Mycenaean culture is considered to be an early form of Greek, according to the wiki article: [Mycenaean Greek](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycenaean_Greek)

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**Author:** ![GreysonCarlisle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@GreysonCarlisle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreysonCarlisle)\
**Post date:** [May 1, 2020, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-olympian-gods-and-goddesses-and-demi-god-offspring-are-accepted-as-imports-into-greek-myth/852801/35 "2020-05-01T11:52:11Z")

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> [@PlaceboTarget](#):
>
> I am curious about Roger Woodard’s arguments. Does he mention the people(s) that the Greeks could have borrowed the Titans from? Has he identified those deities in their original cultural environment and established adequate correspondences?

I don’t recall Woodard’s arguments. When the libraries reopen, maybe we can look it up. Robin Hard suggests Hurrian.

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**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [May 1, 2020, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-olympian-gods-and-goddesses-and-demi-god-offspring-are-accepted-as-imports-into-greek-myth/852801/36 "2020-05-01T11:57:14Z")

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It’s clear that Kronos was the chief of the Titans and the father of Zeus, but Chronos’ status is less clear. Sometimes he’s identified as a primordial, sometimes as an ordinary god, sometimes conflated with Kronos due to the similar name, etc. And really, this sort of vagueness and confusion isn’t uncommon among gods: For comparison, Eros/Cupid are sometimes considered to be the same being and sometimes two different beings, and might be primordial or might be Aphrodite’s son, etc.

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**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\
**Post date:** [May 1, 2020, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-olympian-gods-and-goddesses-and-demi-god-offspring-are-accepted-as-imports-into-greek-myth/852801/37 "2020-05-01T13:40:08Z")

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> [@PlaceboTarget](#):
>
> The Greek civilization emerged after the fall of the Mycenaean one. There was no reason for the Greeks to adopt any of the gods that had controlled the fate of a vanishing population.
> 
> Also, there isn’t archaeological evidence that the Greeks were supposed to fight any invasions in the archaic period of their settlements. The only aggression they faced was that of other Greek tribes.

But faiths often adopt - and distort - bits and pieces of older mythologies. If Christians could adopt pagan gods as demons, fairies or saints, why couldn’t the Greeks have retained gods from Mycenaean or even older cultures as titans or primordials?

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**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\
**Post date:** [May 1, 2020, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-olympian-gods-and-goddesses-and-demi-god-offspring-are-accepted-as-imports-into-greek-myth/852801/38 "2020-05-01T15:21:38Z")

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Nobody knows much about who was living in Greece before any Indo-European groups reached there. There are some words in Classic Greek that don’t seem to have come from Proto-Indo-European. However, those words can’t be traced back to any one language or language family. Some people claim that they can trace them back to a single language, but their claims are not generally accepted:

> **[Pre-Greek substrate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Greek_substrate)**
>
> The Pre-Greek substrate (or Pre-Greek substratum) consists of the unknown pre-Indo-European language(s) spoken in prehistoric Greece before the coming of the Proto-Greek language in the Greek peninsula during the Bronze Age. It is possible that Greek acquired approximately 1,000 words and proper names from such a language or group of languages, because some of its vocabulary cannot be satisfactorily explained as deriving from Proto-Greek and a Proto-Indo-European reconstruction is almost certainl...

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**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\
**Post date:** [May 2, 2020, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-olympian-gods-and-goddesses-and-demi-god-offspring-are-accepted-as-imports-into-greek-myth/852801/39 "2020-05-02T00:21:24Z")

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> [@Northern\_Piper](#):
>
> I don’t think there’s that clear-cut a distinction between “Greek” and “Mycenaean”, is there? The language of the Mycenaean culture is considered to be an early form of Greek, according to the wiki article: [Mycenaean Greek](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycenaean_Greek)

The video I linked treats them as distinct, but still completely Greek. It says that those we call “Ancient Greece” considered themselves the direct successors of the Mycenaean civilization. And it seems that so much of their culture transferred between the two that anything that was originally Mycenaean is not considered to have been imported to Ancient Greece.

It seems to me that the only reason there is such a clear dividing line is that there was a dark ages period, i.e. where things were not written down. So we don’t see the evolution of one into the other. We see one falling and another arising.

The description reminds me of the Roman Empire vs. the Holy Roman Empire. They technically are not the same civilization, but they are direct descendants, with the latter trying to revive the former.

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**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\
**Post date:** [May 2, 2020, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-olympian-gods-and-goddesses-and-demi-god-offspring-are-accepted-as-imports-into-greek-myth/852801/40 "2020-05-02T02:27:07Z")

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Derivations of names:  
Titans:  
Iapetos: ? (Semitic?)  
Theia: \< Proto-Indo-European \*_dʰéh₁s_ \< \*_dʰeh₁_- ‘to put’  
Themis: \< Proto-Indo-European \*_dʰeh₁_- ‘to put’  
Koios: ? (possibly related to Proto-Indo-European \*_ḱey-_ ‘to sharpen’)  
Krios: probably \< Proto-Indo-European \*_ḱerh₂-_ ‘horn’  
Kronos: ?  
Mnemosyne: \< Proto-Indo-European \*_men_- ‘to think’ + \*-_tuna_ (adjectival formant)  
Prometheus: Proto-Indo-European \*_pro_ ‘before’ + \*_men_- ‘mind’ + \*_dhe_- ‘put’  
Rhea: ?  
Tethys: probably related to _tēthē_ ‘grandmother’ \< Proto-Indo-European \*_dʰeh₁(y)-_ ‘to suck’  
Hyperion: Proto-Indo-European \*_upér_ ‘above’ + Anatolian suffix  
Phoebe: \< Proto-Indo-European \*_bʰoigʷ-o_- ‘to shine’  
Okeanos: ?

Olympians:  
Athena: ?  
Apollo: ?  
Ares: ?  
Artemis: ?  
Aphrodite: ?  
Demeter: ? + Proto-Indo-European \*_méh₂tēr_ ‘mother’  
Dionysos: probably from _Zeus_ + ? unknown second element  
Hermes: possibly \< Proto-Indo-European \*_ser_- ‘to bind together’ or ?  
Hestia: Either ‘hearth’ \< Proto-Indo-European \*_h₂wes-_ ‘to dwell’ or \< Pre-Greek?  
Hephaistos: ?  
Zeus: \< Proto-Indo-European \*_dyḗws_  
Hera: ?  
Poseideon: ?

Conclusion: Clear as mud! Not surprising with Greek mythology.

I hope everybody read the article on Proto-Indo-European religion that **Wendell Wagner** linked to above. The article made it clear that Greek mythology is not very helpful in reconstructing IE mythology, because it’s mixed up with so much else from diverse origins including pre-Greek (Pelasgian?), Anatolian, Semitic, maybe Hurrian (which would have gotten in via Hittite or other Anatolian), and Athena knows what else.

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