Yeah, that must be the reason. I’m not familiar with mediaeval myths about unicorns, so it means pretty much “a horse with a horn” (but I wouldn’t count an oryx as one—the uni- part means it has to only have one horn, doesn’t it :-)), but on the other hand I know about the myth of the mermaids’ singing (and Ulysses’s strategy to cope with it) so I wouldn’t count the top half of a woman glued onto the bottom half of a fish as one.
In Spanish (and presumably also in whichever language is army’s native tongue, if it is not Spanish) the word ‘sirena’ is used for both siren and mermaid, hence the confusion.
Interestingly, mermaid myths may have been deliberate hoaxes, which makes the question of a “real” mermaid even muddier.
I’m not sure how Ctesias or Aristotle would react to seeing an oryx- they might decide it’s a new duoceros different from monoceri or they might say “oops, I guess we only saw depictions of monoceri in profile, they actually have two horns.”
Yeah, that must be the reason. I’m not familiar with mediaeval myths about unicorns, so it means pretty much “a horse with a horn” (but I wouldn’t count an oryx as one—the uni- part means it has to only have one horn, doesn’t it :-)), but on the other hand I know about the myth of the mermaids’ singing (and Ulysses’s strategy to cope with it) so I wouldn’t count the top half of a woman glued onto the bottom half of a fish as one.
A nitpick: The Odyssey had sirens singing, not mermaids—and those were half-bird women, not half-fish women. See how they were depicted in ancient times
In Spanish (and presumably also in whichever language is army’s native tongue, if it is not Spanish) the word ‘sirena’ is used for both siren and mermaid, hence the confusion.
Yes, it’s Italian.
Interestingly, mermaid myths may have been deliberate hoaxes, which makes the question of a “real” mermaid even muddier.
I’m not sure how Ctesias or Aristotle would react to seeing an oryx- they might decide it’s a new duoceros different from monoceri or they might say “oops, I guess we only saw depictions of monoceri in profile, they actually have two horns.”