Hippocoon

Hippocoon comes out of the horse-rich corners of Greek myth, built from hippos, horse, with a second element whose meaning ancient grammarians already disputed. Several figures carry the name: a Spartan king who usurped his half-brother Tyndareus, a Trojan ally killed in the Iliad, a companion of Aeneas. None of them quite took hold in the later imagination, and the name has drifted almost entirely into classical footnotes. Three syllables, hip-POH-koh-on, a mouthful of consonants and breath. It is an archaeologist's name, a name for a boy destined for Greek vocabulary lists and the quiet thrill of reading Homer in the original.