Hekuba (Ἑκάβη) was the great Queen of Troy — wife of King Priam and mother of nineteen children including Hector, Paris, Cassandra, and Polyxena. Her tragedy at the fall of Troy made her the embodiment of grieving motherhood.
Euripides' Hecuba (424 BCE) and Shakespeare's reference in Hamlet ("What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?") preserved her enduring grief.
Hekuba reduces to eight — the number of Trojan queen.