Medusa

Many people are citing that "Greek mythology" held that Medusa was originally the most beautiful woman in the world. This isn't true. While it is true that Ovid (a ROMAN poet) crafted up the pretty Medusa/Poseidon rape tale, Greek myth held that she was hideous beyond measure. Pindar calls her "fair faced" at one point, but besides that one instance you've got centuries of the Gorgons as the most hideous/terror inducing images in existence. In the Iliad, just the thought of the image made Hector's blood run cold. An ancient apotropaic symbol, the Gorgoneion, is a manifestation of Medusa. This image was used to scare away evil because it was just so hideous.

Some feminists and neo-pagans view Medusa as the archetype of the angry, violated priestess, and Athena as the traitor to the goddess culture. Medusa represents the beautiful, sensual, egalitarian priestesses who were raped and abused by the violent patriarchal invaders. She then turned into an ugly, evil-eyed woman so no man would rape her. Athena represents the woman who accepted the patriarchal views of a chaste, obedient woman and turned against the old form of the goddess that included death, magic, and non-reproductive sexuality. Killing Medusa could be translated as killing the last traces of the 'dark goddess'.

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I think Medusa conjures up too many negatives images to be a first name, but this might be a great middle name or pet name.

The Medusa of Greek mythology was a ravishingly beautiful maiden, originally. The myth tells that Medusa had been a priestess of Athena, who fell for Poseidon. When Athena found Medusa and Poseidon together, she was so enraged, that she cursed Medusa with the writhing serpants for her hair, and made her face "so terrible to behold that the mere sight of it turned onlookers to stone." Her sisters, Stheno and Euryale, were also made into these creatures, for standing beside their sister when she was cursed.

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Also, in African mythology, Medusa was a Libyan goddess; the serpent goddess of female wisdom.

Medusa was actually very beautiful. She was so beautiful she had a curse placed on her, which is why she became the way everyone knows her as.

Medusa was the daughter of Phorkys and Keto. She was one of three. She was also the only mortal one of her and her sisters. She was very beautiful and lived in the far north where there was no sun. Being curious she wanted to see the sun. She asked Athena for permission to visit the south to see the sun. Athena denied her permission. Medusa grew very angry and said Athena denied her permission because she was jealous of her beauty and for that Athena gave her snakes for hair and was made so ugly anyone who looked into her eyes would be turned into stone as punishment for what she had said.

According to the mythology, Medusa actually wasn't a hideously ugly woman. The legend goes that she was the most beautiful woman in the world, but that the face she was making was so hideous that it turned anyone who looked at it to stone.

Some versions of Medusa's story say that Poseidon raped her in Athena's temple rather than Medusa willingly accepting Poseidon's advances.

According to Greek mythology, Medusa was originally the most beautiful one of the Gorgons, which was why Poseidon, the God of the sea, took a fancy to her and asked to have sex with her. She agreed, but unfortunately, just for kicks, he wanted to do it in the temple of Athene, the chaste Godess of wisdom and the patroness of the city of Athens, who had hated Poseidon ever since he tried to sink down Athens just to expand his watery region. Naturally, this horrible disgrace of her temple enfuriated the chaste Athene, so she took revenge at Medusa by turning her into the hideous, snake-haired monster we all know and love, and whom she eventually helped Perseus destroy by telling him to look only at the monster's reflection. Also, after Perseus decapitated Medusa, Athene put the image of her head into her shield and made it one of her symbols.