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Anaraxes · 08-02-2018, 11:41 AM

The translation / transliteration I got via Google was "Arpias Mati" (being equally lazy with diacritics). Actually, it was "to máti tis arpías", which is closer to "the eye of the harpy" thanks to the extra words.

(I don't know Greek, much less ancient Greek, but apparently you can put adjectives before or after the noun, which has a subtle effect on the emphasis, whether or not you're distinguishing this eye from other eyes, and so on. Putting it after means you need the articles. Leaving out all the articles is -- I gather -- incorrect, as it's then a sentence with an implicit "to be" -- "The harpy is an eye". But no doubt someone in medieval or modern times was equally lazy :) I went for putting "harpy" first, since that's usually what we do with constellation names. IMO, it looks better without the 'H', which is closer to the Greek spelling anyway -- το μάτι της αρπίας.)

08-02-2018, 11:41 AM	#7
Anaraxes Join Date: Sep 2007	Re: Determining the Qualities of Stars The translation / transliteration I got via Google was "Arpias Mati" (being equally lazy with diacritics). Actually, it was "to máti tis arpías", which is closer to "the eye of the harpy" thanks to the extra words. (I don't know Greek, much less ancient Greek, but apparently you can put adjectives before or after the noun, which has a subtle effect on the emphasis, whether or not you're distinguishing this eye from other eyes, and so on. Putting it after means you need the articles. Leaving out all the articles is -- I gather -- incorrect, as it's then a sentence with an implicit "to be" -- "The harpy is an eye". But no doubt someone in medieval or modern times was equally lazy :) I went for putting "harpy" first, since that's usually what we do with constellation names. IMO, it looks better without the 'H', which is closer to the Greek spelling anyway -- το μάτι της αρπίας.)