Hermes

A name built on a pile of stones

The usual derivation of Hermes is from herma: a stone, a rock, or the heap of stones that marked a boundary or a crossroads. Britannica gives this as the likely origin while noting that it is scholarly opinion rather than settled fact, which is the right level of confidence to hold.

The herm — the sculpted form — grew out of the same thing: a plain square pillar, usually topped with a head, set up at a boundary or outside a doorway. In Athens they stood outside ordinary houses. A god whose name means "the marker at the edge of the property" is a strange and very specific thing to be the god of, and it turns out to explain most of what he does.

What the god actually did

Hermes is the son of Zeus and Maia, and his portfolio is unusually wide for a Greek deity. He carried messages between the gods and between the living and the dead, which is why he is the one who leads souls down — the psychopomp. He looked after travellers, roads, markets and merchants, and also thieves and liars, because a god of movement and exchange protects whoever moves and exchanges.

He is credited with inventing the lyre from a tortoise shell, and with stealing Apollo's cattle on the same day he was born. That combination — invention plus theft, charm plus cunning — is the whole character, and it is why the name has always carried a little mischief rather than pure dignity.

For a dog name the relevant part is the travelling. This is a god who is always going somewhere and always knows the way back, which is a reasonable thing to want in a dog that will be off the lead.

The harness-maker who shares the name

The other Hermès most people meet is the French luxury house, founded in Paris in 1837 by Thierry Hermès as a workshop making harnesses and bridles for horses. It moved into saddlery, then into leather goods, and became the thing it is now. The horse tack is the origin rather than a later affectation, and the firm still uses a ducal carriage and horse as its emblem.

That makes the name older in the animal world than it looks. A word that began on a horse's bridle and now sits on a handbag is, at least, thematically consistent.

Be ready for the question, though. Name a dog Hermes and a good number of people will hear a handbag, and in Britain a smaller number will hear a parcel company — the delivery firm that traded as Hermes until it rebranded to Evri in 2022. Both are recent layers sitting on top of a word that is roughly three thousand years old.

Soft consonants, and two pronunciations

Hermes is two syllables, HER-meez in English, with the stress on the first. In French the same spelling is er-MESS, stress on the second and the h silent, and that is the version attached to the brand. You will hear both, and you should decide which one you want early, because you cannot reasonably have both.

The name's weakness as a call sign is its consonants. There is no plosive anywhere in it — h, m, z — and nothing to bite on, so it does not carry across a field the way a name with a k or a t does. It is also easily lost in ambient noise.

It shortens to Herm or Hermie. Herm is the one to think about twice: it is the English word for the sculpted pillar the name comes from, it is the first syllable of "hermit", and it reads to most people as a shortening of Herman. Hermie is softer and safer, though it will be heard as a small dog's name.

See also: Greek dog names · Apollo · Atlas · Helios · Athena

Common questions