Preface To Paris: The Name Of The City

(Paris was a jerk.  From here.)

There wasn't a lot of research done for this week's show because it's mainly interviews - good interviews but long interviews, two with people in Paris (one of whom is French), & one with a friend in Belgium - but I did discover that the city was not named after the dumbfuck up there whose coveting started the Trojan War.

Oh yeah I sided with the Greeks.  I mean, I guess Homer hated him too - he portrays him as a coward & a rapist & a kidnapper.  & he lets him kill Achilles, who was like a superhero.  Except for his knee or something?*

No, Paris is named after the Gallic tribe that settled there.  That maybe Julius Caesar wiped out?  Maybe he just mentioned them.  Mentioned wiping them out?  But isn't it a little weird that the city Paris & the mythological character Paris have basically the same name.  & that Greek mythology was basically the religion of the part of the world where Paris was founded?  Has anyone made the case that the name stuck because people were like, "Okay, the Parasites lived here" (or whatever they were called) "but it's so much like that really terrible person who caused that ten-year war & he also murdered Achilles.  It's be easy to remember."

Maybe not.  But all my life I thought the city was named after the mythological dingleberry.  You learn something new every day!  Although you forget three old things every day as well.  So the chance you might be re-learning something is quite high.  But you'll never really know.

*I stole that joke in a sense from a very fun tweet from a while back that said something like "My lack of knowledge of Greek mythology is my real Achilles' horse."