Non-Indicative Name/Oral Tradition

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Examples of Non-Indicative Names in Oral Tradition include:

  • The Sword in the Stone is technically a Sword in an Anvil on a Stone. Early swordsmiths would shape a weapon using a smoothed flat piece of stone, marble for preference. The term for one was a "sword-stone". When iron anvils began to take over, the term stuck around for a while. So the Sword in the Stone was thrust through two Sword-stones, the first a "modern" one of iron, tho other an old pagan one of stone. The Sword in the Anvil isn't as poetic as the Sword in the Stone, so the name stuck even though the language has moved on.
  • The Three Holy Kings in Christianity are neither holy nor kings, and we're not sure if there were three of them.
    • The belief that there were three of them comes from the verse in the Bible that says that "wise men" (who were likely astrologers) brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Three gifts, so it was assumed that there were three "kings".
      • Somehow insinuating that three gifts fit for a king indicated that the givers were also kings. The story was later elaborated, giving them names (Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar), made them a youth, a man, and an old man and an African, an Asian and a European so that once could say that representatives of all humanity worshipped Jesus at his birth. Except half of the planet is female, and quite a few people also live in the Americas and Oceania.
      • At least some interpretations states that they pointed out that He was a king (gold), God (frankincense) and human (myrrh - which was used in burning rituals).
      • Also, in earlier mythology, Krishna was also given gold, frankincense and myrrh at birth, for precisely the same reason.
  • Heracles means "Glory of Hera". He's Zeus' son but not Hera's (he would be her nephew) and was given the name in an attempt to please her. It didn't work.
    • Although this may be because the myth of Heracles has been handed down to us in the Hera-phobic Theban version. It would appear that in the lost version from Argos, a city that took worship of Hera very seriously, the relationship between Heracles and Hera was portrayed on more friendly terms.
  • Pandora's Box; in most original versions of the story, it's not a box, but a large, sealed jar.
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