Mythological influence on the modern world.

What do Nike, Thursday, Morphine and the Olympics all have in common? These are words that I'm sure all of us have heard before but perhaps not their origins. These words are all derivatives of common myth and lore of ancient civilizations. Many terms that we use in todays society are reminders of our past, even locational names and the names of the constellations. However, ancient mythological influence is not bound just to nomenclature. We have pulled from the influence of ancient mythologies for many other things besides their names, such as many forms of architecture, governmental influences, and even common sporting events. Let's take for instance, Nike. Nike is a name that undoubtedly everyone has heard at least once in their lives, but its true meaning is not that of popular footwear. Nike in fact is the Greek Goddess of speed and agility. When the ancient Greeks wanted blessings of hasty travel, they would pray to Nike in hope that she would bless them with so. With understanding that, there's no doubt where the proprietors of Nike found the name for their company. In todays culture, Sunday is widely revered as a day worship, but for the ancient Norse peoples this was not the case. The ancient Norse were polytheistic, meaning that they served multiple Gods, almost 100 actually. Some of these Gods were believed to be more powerful than others, thus deserving more worship then the lesser. On the day we now know as Thursday, the Norse worshiped the Thunder-God: Thor. In its original state, the day was literally called "Thor's-day" in honor of the God himself. Over time and translation into modern English the word evolved into simply "Thursday". Thursday isn't the only day of the week that modern English adopted from Norse mythology however. We also get the day of "Friday" from the day that they worshipped the Goddess of love, Freya or more commonly referred to as just Frey. Just as there was a day of worship for Thor there was a day for Freya as well; it was known as "Frey-day" or as we know it: "Friday". If you've had any kind of surgery or have ever seen a war movie, you've most likely heard of Morphine before. Morphine is a potent opiate pain-reliever that is extracted from the Poppy plant. Morphine however is not a modern advancement of medicine, people have been using the "Milk of the Poppy" for pain alleviation for over 5,000 years! We devolved the name Morphine from the name of the Greek God Morpheus. Morpheus is the Greek God of sleep and of dreams. Upon understanding that Poppy plants are the same plants that we get Heroin from, its not hard to see where Morphine's nomenclature originated. Other examples of mythological influence upon our modern society include (but are not limited to), many forms of architecture, governmental influences, and even common sporting events. In terms of architecture most of the kinds of it that we would consider to be beautiful are based off of the architecture of ancient civilizations. If you look at any of the Capital buildings in the U.S. or even the White House for that matter they all have huge pillars and large overhead rotunda's. The architects that built these buildings based them off of the ancient Greek and Roman structures, such as The Pantheon in Rome or The Parthenon in Greece. As for, governmental influences, we owe our modern forms of government to the ancient Greeks and Romans, a process that we are very familiar with today called Democracy. The ancient people simply got tired of being told what to do by tyrannical rulers, so they invented a form of government where the people are the ones who hold the power, instead of a single totalitarian. The Olympics were games held by the ancients to prove their might and skill to the Gods. Many times those who won were voluntarily sacrificed to the Gods, as they would only want the best of what the their people had to offer them. The games went as a way of proving who was worthy enough to be given back to the Gods. This practice is not mainly of European descent however, the Mayans also played games to prove worthiness. Just as the Greeks and Romans, the winner of these games were sacrificed to the Gods. Even though most mythologies have been ruled out by newer ones (under the pseudonym of religion) and are no longer relevant in todays society their ancient influence still lingers on in our culture as reminders of their popularity in days gone by.