Odyssey 9.16 · Book 9, lines 16–18
First, my name — so we may be guest-friends
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νῦν δʼ ὄνομα πρῶτον μυθήσομαι, ὄφρα καὶ ὑμεῖς εἴδετʼ, ἐγὼ δʼ ἂν ἔπειτα φυγὼν ὕπο νηλεὲς ἦμαρ ὑμῖν ξεῖνος ἔω καὶ ἀπόπροθι δώματα ναίων.
Now first I will tell my name, so that you too may know it, and I then, when I have escaped from under the pitiless day, may be your guest-friend, and though I dwell in a home far off.
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The setting
On the edge of his story, Odysseus prepares to name himself. He frames the naming as an act of hospitality: knowing his name makes his hosts his guest-friends, a bond that will hold even after he sails.
A note on this passage
Before the tale, the name. He will give it first, he says, so that his hosts will know him — and so that, if he escapes death, he may be their guest-friend even from far away, a man with a home elsewhere.
This is the machinery of xenia at work. A name exchanged makes strangers into guest-friends, and the bond ties two houses across distance and years. Odysseus is not only introducing himself; he is opening a formal, lasting tie with Phaeacia — the tie that will in fact carry him home. The 'pitiless day' he hopes to have escaped is death itself.
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