system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How do we know what names mean? E.g. Hercules wife was called deinara, which means husband destroyer. In ancient greece was this woman literally called husband-destroyer?
gpt
We do have lots of ancient texts which uses these words and some even explain the words directly. And "husband destroyer" is not any more unusual name then a lot of modern names like Patience, Faith, August, Angel, etc. However most modern names are traditional and even in other languages and the meaning is lost to us. But in the ancient world it was more common to have names that would be a word of phrase in the language as they did not have the big pool of names to draw from.