WHAT’S IN A NAME? AMAZONIAN HORSE-NAMES

"Amazon Breaking a Savage Horse", 1843, bronze, by Jean-Jacques Feuchére. On display at the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts on the Stanford University campus in Stanford, California. By I, BrokenSphere, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4270411
No culture in history has been more bound up with one animal than that of the Amazons. Fabled warrior women of the steppes, they are known to have fought from horseback and to have employed weapons, such as the long spear and bow-and-arrow, that enabled them to capitalize on their skill as cavalrywomen and minimize any physical shortcomings. As women then and now generally possess less upper body strength and a shorter reach than men, it would have availed them nothing to have fought on foot or hand-to-hand. So, it seems that the Amazons played to their strengths.
Horses were and are an intrinsic part of steppe culture. Steppe nomads still ride horseback as part of daily life, and their children learn this skill while they are still in single digits. Horses – or at least some form of pack animal – were needed to move a camp once the sewage piled up – as it would after a long winter – and to follow the herds. They were also useful in steppe warfare, which, as has been seen with other nomads, such as the Indigenous Americans of the Great Plains, often employed cavalry.
William Shakespeare famously said, “What’s in a name?” If horses were such an important part of Amazonian life, they surely would have manifested in their names. Let’s see if they did…
The Greeks recorded many Amazonian names. Although a great number of them were to do with warfare and the fabled women’s prowess as warriors – names like, “Worthy of Armor”, “Blameless Defender”, and “Confronting Warrior” – many more were what we’ll call “horse-names”. Below is a list of such often-colorful names.
§  Ainippe, “Swift Mare”
§  Alcippe, “Powerful Mare”
§  Hipp, “Horse”
§  Hippolyte I and II, “Of the Stampeding Horse”
§  Hippothoe, “Imperious Mare”
§  Lysippe, “She Who Lets Loose the Horses”
§  Melanippe, “Black Mare”
§  Philippis, “Woman Who Loves Horses”
§  Xanthippe, “Yellow Mare”
Judging from the above, horses would seem to be not only important to the Amazons, but a major feature of their culture, possibly even a totem animal. 
In future, I will take a look at whether the Scythian and Pictish languages, for whom we have only limited glossaries – and, in the case of Pictish, very little clear understanding of the language, which has never been fully translated – also gave their chieftains, warriors, or women names relating to horses. Maybe my answer to Shakespeare’s famous quote is that, “If there’s a horse in the name, there might be a cultural connection.” Or, to quote Rosie O’Donnell in Sleepless in Seattle, “It’s like a little clue.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Ephron, Nora. Sleepless in Seattle. Tri-Star Pictures, 1993.

Silver, Carly. “Meet the Amazon Warriors Who Brought the Greeks to Their Knees.” ThoughtCo, ThoughtCo, 25 May 2019, www.thoughtco.com/amazon-queens-who-rocked-ancient-world-4012619.


Vergano, Dan. “Amazon Warriors' Names Revealed Amid ‘Gibberish’ on Ancient Greek Vases.” National Geographic, National Geographic Society, 23 Sept. 2014, news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/09/140923-amazon-greek-vase-translations-science/.

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