sort.

HERMOGENES: With all my heart; for am very curious to hear the rest of the
enquiry about names.

SOCRATES: Then let us proceed; and where would you have us begin, now that
we have got a sort of outline of the enquiry? Are there any names which
witness of themselves that they are not given arbitrarily, but have a
natural fitness? The names of heroes and of men in general are apt to be
deceptive because they are often called after ancestors with whose names,
as we were saying, they may have no business; or they are the expression of
a wish like Eutychides (the son of good fortune), or Sosias (the Saviour),
or Theophilus (the beloved of God), and others. But I think that we had
better leave these, for there will be more chance of finding correctness in
the names of immutable essences;--there ought to have been more care taken
about them when they were named, and perhaps there may have been some more
than human power at work occasionally in giving them names.

HERMOGENES: I think so, Socrates.

SOCRATES: Ought we not to begin with the consideration of the Gods, and
show that they are rightly named Gods?

HERMOGENES: Yes, that will be well.

SOCRATES: My notion would be something of this sort:--I suspect that the
sun, moon, earth, stars, and heaven, which are still the Gods of many
barbarians, were the only Gods known to the aboriginal Hellenes. Seeing
that they were always moving and running, from their running nature they
were called Gods or runners (Theous, Theontas); and when men became