Assassin's Creed: Odyssey - Strange Names and Places

By Owain Williams

Finally, almost seven years since it came out, I have got to properly play Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, the series’ entry set during the Archidamian War, a roughly ten-year part of the Peloponnesian War in the fifth century BC.

While the game is certainly historical fantasy – after all, one of the first things you see when you enter the main game is a statue of Zeus as tall as a mountain on Kephallonia – I am thoroughly impressed with how the game brings the world of ancient Greece to life. Riding through the countryside feels like wandering through Greece, while the urban environments feel lived in, as though they are places where people actually eat, sleep, work, and go to the agora.

However, there were some choices around the names of both people and places that left me scratching my head. The starting area of the game is the island of Kephallonia, a relatively minor area of the ancient Greek world. Of the four poleis attested on the island during the Peloponnesian War (see Thucydides, 2.30) – Same, Pale (also known as Paleis), Kranioi, and Pronnoi – only Same appears as a location in the game. The names of the other poleis are used for regions of the island, with Kranioi, for example, given the area ‘The Ruins of Kranioi’ – an odd choice considering Kranioi was an active polis in the period, beating off a Corinthian naval invasion early in the Peloponnesian War (Thucydides, 2.33). Of course, videogames cannot recreate the ancient world 1:1, with a settlement present for every attested settlement in antiquity; however, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, instead of including these poleis as locations, includes other settlements. There is the village of Kausos on Kephallonia, for instance, which appears to be named after the ancient Greek kausos, meaning ‘fever’ (the village is the setting of a quest concerning an outbreak of plague). Why include an entirely fictional location when historical locations could be used and are otherwise left out? Another oddity is the use of modern Greek pronunciation – and the English transliteration of the modern Greek – for ancient Greek places. For example, Same (Σάμη) is spelled Sami and pronounced ‘samee’, when it should be pronounced ‘sam-eh’, with a long ‘e’. Similarly, Pale (Πάλη) or Paleis (Παλεîς) is spelled Pali. While modern Greek is a descendant of ancient Greek, it is not the same language, with some significant differences in pronunciation in some cases.

The inhabitants of Kephallonia also sometimes have strange names. One character all players will meet is Markos, whose names, despite giving the impression of being ancient Greek, is likely a Hellenised version of the Latin name Marcus. According to the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, the name ‘Markos’ is first attested in Katane, Sicily, and dated to ca. 390–340 BC; after this, all other dated attestations come from the second century BC, a time when Italians were increasingly present in the Aegean. With the latter attestations in mind, the earliest attestation looks like an anomaly, possibly belonging to a Latin present in Sicily in the fourth century BC. Another character, one players will also meet, is called Drucilla (pronounced Drusilla), which is a thoroughly Latin name. I understand that naming characters is difficult, especially in such a large game as Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, but using what are quite clearly Latin names seems sloppy.

I appreciate using Greek voice actors for the game instead of choosing the typical received British accent. It adds a level of authenticity to the game’s ambience. Yet the use of modern Greek names and pronunciations is odd. Ultimately, in my opinion, it undermines any attempt at verisimilitude. 

What do you think? Am I nitpicking or is this a significant oversight on the developers’ part?