Odyssey 9.364 · Book 9, lines 364–367
Nobody is my name
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Odysseus — Κύκλωψ, εἰρωτᾷς μʼ ὄνομα κλυτόν, αὐτὰρ ἐγώ τοι ἐξερέω· σὺ δέ μοι δὸς ξείνιον, ὥς περ ὑπέστης. Οὖτις ἐμοί γʼ ὄνομα· Οὖτιν δέ με κικλήσκουσι μήτηρ ἠδὲ πατὴρ ἠδʼ ἄλλοι πάντες ἑταῖροι.
Cyclops, you ask me my famous name, but I will declare it to you; and you, give me a guest-gift, just as you promised. Nobody is my name; and Nobody they call me, my mother and father and all my other comrades.
Word by word
The setting
The wine has taken hold. The Cyclops, softened, asks his guest's name and half-promises the gift a host owes. Odysseus gives the answer the whole escape depends on.
A note on this passage
The trick is sprung in a single word. Asked his name, Odysseus answers Oûtis, "Nobody" — and even presses the giant for the guest-gift a host owes a guest. To Polyphemus it is just an odd name; to us it is the whole escape, already loaded.
The pun cannot survive translation. Oûtis ("Nobody") is built from ou tis, "not anyone," so that when the blinded Cyclops later screams that Nobody is killing him (9.408), his neighbours will hear "no one is" and leave. Deeper still, that mế tis ("not anyone," 9.410) chimes with mêtis, "cunning" — Odysseus's own defining gift. The name that means no one sounds like the very wits that beat the giant, and Homer says so himself at 9.414. English can keep one joke or the other, never both at once.
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