Entry № 10497 · Greek origin

Thetis Thetis — Meaning, Origin & Baby Name Popularity

/ THEH-tis /
Gender
Girl
Origin
Greek
Meaning
"Sea-nymph (Achilles's mother)"
Syllables
2
First recorded
Ancient (Greek)

A name that means "sea-nymph (achilles's mother)".

Thetis (Θέτις) is of pre-Greek origin. The chief of the fifty Nereid sea-nymphs, daughter of Nereus and Dorisforced to marry the mortal Peleus when an oracle predicted her son would be greater than his father (Zeus and Poseidon had both sought her hand and withdrew). Mother of Achilles — she famously dipped her infant in the River Styx, gripping him by the heel, leaving only that one spot vulnerable. The wedding of Peleus and Thetis is the framing event of the entire Trojan Cycle.

Featured throughout Homer's Iliad and Statius's Achilleid.

Sea-nymph. Achilles's mother; dipped him in the Styx by his fatal heel.

The name in its native script.

Θέτις
Transliteration
Thétis
Pronunciation
/ ˈθiː.tɪs /
Root
Grammatical form

Where Thetis stands.

Thetis does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.

Thetiss before her.

Real people
Thetis
Greek sea-nymph.
In fiction
Thetis
Homer's Iliad.

Names connected to Thetis.

The number behind Thetis.

9

The Giver

In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Thetis reduce to 9, The Giver. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.