Comments (Meaning / History Only)
Medea was also a priestess of Hecate. She killed her baby brother, throwing the pieces out to sea to distract her father's navy from catching them.
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Breakofday is correct! The name is of Greek origin, and I have heard that it means "ruling."
Medea, a powerful witch, was the granddaughter of Helios (the Sun). She was also the aunt of the witch Circe who held Odysseus and his men captive during his voyage home from Troy. The brief details on this site about the name are grammatically incorrect; therefore, they are misleading. I read: "For revenge Medea slew Jason's new lover and also had her own children by Jason killed." This passive voice sentence implies that she may have had someone else commit the murders, but in the original Greek play it is clear that she takes her boys behind the curtain and slits their throats herself. She then throws their lifeless bodies down from the tower to the feet of Jason, and her grandfather sends a dragon-drawn chariot of fire to carry her off into the sky.
The negative connotations by modern standards are obvious. She reads as a vengeful, cold woman who murders anyone in her way, even her own children. If you try and look at it through the lens of ancient Greece--see that Jason's abandonment of her and the boys in favor of a young princess and a new kingdom would have left her sons to lead the lives of servants--you can see that from her perspective she may have believed she was doing the boys a great favor. Without Jason, she had no rights, and if Jason should have had a new son, his first two would have lost all birthrights. Again, this was a different time and place, and if she was truly meant to be a villain then the play would not have ended with her being the only one being rescued by a God.
I see her as a tragic hero. I like the name, and I would give it to a daughter.
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Medea, a powerful witch, was the granddaughter of Helios (the Sun). She was also the aunt of the witch Circe who held Odysseus and his men captive during his voyage home from Troy. The brief details on this site about the name are grammatically incorrect; therefore, they are misleading. I read: "For revenge Medea slew Jason's new lover and also had her own children by Jason killed." This passive voice sentence implies that she may have had someone else commit the murders, but in the original Greek play it is clear that she takes her boys behind the curtain and slits their throats herself. She then throws their lifeless bodies down from the tower to the feet of Jason, and her grandfather sends a dragon-drawn chariot of fire to carry her off into the sky.
The negative connotations by modern standards are obvious. She reads as a vengeful, cold woman who murders anyone in her way, even her own children. If you try and look at it through the lens of ancient Greece--see that Jason's abandonment of her and the boys in favor of a young princess and a new kingdom would have left her sons to lead the lives of servants--you can see that from her perspective she may have believed she was doing the boys a great favor. Without Jason, she had no rights, and if Jason should have had a new son, his first two would have lost all birthrights. Again, this was a different time and place, and if she was truly meant to be a villain then the play would not have ended with her being the only one being rescued by a God.
I see her as a tragic hero. I like the name, and I would give it to a daughter.
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Medea was a woman who could have no babies. As a result her husband left her and married a woman who had seven children for him. Medea is said to have killed all but one child. The child's name was Jason.
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I don't know where the previous poster got her/his info, but that story doesn't add up to the Greek legend. Medea did have children and their father was Jason. He deserted her for a newer model after she helped him escape her father's wrath. She avenged herself upon Jason by killing his new bride, his new father-in-law, and their own children. Read the story!
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In my book "The Virgin Book of Baby Names", it states that Medea means "middle girl" (as does Messina). I'm assuming both of these are of Latin origin
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Comments are left by users of this website. They are not checked for accuracy.
Also, it is important to note that in Jason & Madea's contemporary era 3,000 years ago, murder, even the murder of a close relative, was a commonality in literature and art. As mentioned before, Medea was a "tragic heroine" by her day's standards.
It can be difficult to appreciate such starkly different values and mores of ancient worlds when most of us are well-conditioned to modern connotations. I have done more research on the culture of the times of ancient Greece, and had Medea not killed and dismembered her own brother, her own father was going to do the same to her. Also, if she had not killed her own children, they absolutely would have been forced into slavery, assassinated by their own father, or forced into the front lines of battle so they would be slaughtered in the first enemy confrontation (a common occurrence for the period), so Medea was, in fact, sparing her children a much more tortuous end at the hands of their selfish father than they suffered when their mother ended their lives. Sadly, she did them a favor. We must also remember that she kissed her boys and told them she loved them before she took their lives. It is VERY difficult to see filicide as an act of love and kindness, but that is what the original Medea did. If Medea had lived in the 20th or 21st century, she would have just taken full custody of the boys, then financially crippled her ex-husband with monstrous court ordered child support payments and alimony for life, and if he didn't cut that check every month, she would have had his driver's license revoked, his checks garnished, and had him arrested repeatedly.
But the play is not set in the modern era, it is in ancient Greece when divorces were dealt with very, very differently then they are in our times. ;)