03-11-2026
If there's sense, there can be nonsense. I'm Joe, but can I be non-Joe?
English prefixes are fairly productive. Where there's fortune, there's misfortune. Where there's rest, there's unrest. Something not very 'chair' could be an 'un-chair' – at least in a playful way. We don't really prefix names. The Ancient Greeks did, though. Sometimes.
In Book 3 of the Iliad, Hector addresses his brother, Paris, twice as 'Dysparis' (Δύσπαρις). That is the same prefix we inherit in 'dysphoria' or 'dyslexia'. Think of it like the English 'ill-', as in 'ill-fated'. Dysphoria – etymologically – is 'ill-born', that is 'hard to bear' and dyslexia, 'ill-read', that is 'hard to read'. So what is Dysparis? Ill-Paris? What could that even mean? It gets translated in various ways, but almost always with two words; A.S. Klein translates it as 'sinful Paris'. English fails to find a parallel.
I couldn't find any theories as to why this occurs – and, keep in mind, so rarely in Ancient Greek. It appears twice in the Iliad in this repeated passage. Euripides, clearly borrowing from Homer, writes 'Dyselena' (Δυσέλενα), 'Ill-Helen' in his Orestes. Aristophanes makes a pun in his Wasps, calling Amynias 'Kometamynias' (Κομηταμυνίας), literally 'hairy Amynias'. In the Odyssey, Troy, otherwise called Ilion (Ἴλιον), is referred to twice by Penelope as 'Kakoilion' (Κακοίλιον), literally 'bad-Troy', translated by Wilson as 'Evilium' and cleverly by Fagles as 'Destroy' – think 'cacophony', literally 'bad-sound', for an etymological parallel.
So, why were they special? I've left out one remaining ancient example to illustrate a potential theory. In the Odyssey, the shameful beggar Irus is referred to as 'Irus A-irus' (Ἶρος ἄϊρος), literally 'Irus un-Irus'. This is the same prefix as in 'asexual' or 'apolitical'. Irus – as proposed by Gregory Nagy – may come from the same Proto-Indo-European root as the Latin 'vir', meaning man (with a digamma at the beginning of 'Irus', kind of pronounced like a 'w', so try to mouth that out). This is also where we derive the English 'virile'. So, one potential reading of this phrase 'Irus un-Irus' is really 'Irus the unmanly'. Contextually, this fits, and would make a lot more sense. The Greeks, after all, loved their etymological puns. But this would imply they had some awareness of the etymology of the name.
This reminds us of a fact: names are nouns, but they're really a special kind of noun. They are a noun with a one-of-a-kind reference, a single person or place or thing. Maybe to intuit what it means to affix to a word, we need a sense of what that word really means – this is what makes affixes productive. If a name is sufficiently transparent – that is, we understand the meaning which underlies it – maybe we can make sense of an affix. Maybe if you met a person named Joy, a suitable insult would be to call them 'Joy-less'.
This reminds us of another fact: names are a technology. Things have come a long way. I wouldn't be able to tell you what's in a phone. I couldn't explain a train to you, but I understand it a bit better. A steam engine, a bit better than that. A rock, now that's my speed. All names come from non-names. 'Joe' comes from 'Joseph' which comes from the Hebrew 'Yosef', which itself has a meaning. Just as we can forget what goes into a phone – though we've made it – we can forget what has gone into a name. As technology progresses, our understanding of it tends toward diminution. Language, too, is a technology.
Helen (Ἑλένη) was a name the Greeks widely sought to etymologize. Paris (Πάρις), I'm not so sure. I may be on to something. If nothing else, an enduring reminder: to append – or upend – or a pen – is to understand.