Sirens Are Mermaids

Siren's Lament by Anne Stokes

"I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each."

— T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

As You Know, mermaids, like all legendary/mythological creatures, can vary in their portrayal from work to work.

However, despite all the differences in mermaid portrayals, they seem to have one thing in common. For some reason, mermaids tend to be called sirens, and are given the ability to sing phenomenally well, to the point of leading unsuspecting people to their doom. In traditional definitions of mythology, the Siren is not depicted as a mermaid-like fish-woman, but as a winged bird-woman hybrid — in fact, the original Greek Sirens were portrayed as a cross between women and songbirds, and could die by drowning.

This trope is an old one; the siren as mermaid was well-established in the medieval bestiary. In Thomas Hoccleve's early fifteenth century text, La Male Regle, line 233, speaks of mermaids singing men to their deaths, "as old books tell us." The issue is not helped by the fact that, in many Romance languages, sirens and mermaids are referred to by the same word, typically a derivative of the Latin sirena. In another part of the world, the Filipino sirena were described in what we now envision as the mermaid siren. It could be an example of Lost in Translation that these two words became used interchangeably, displacing parts of both.

Subtrope of Our Mermaids Are Different and Our Sirens Are Different. See also Siren Song.

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Examples:

Advertising

• In an early Cap'n Crunch commercial, Magnolia Bulkhead disguises herself as a mermaid and uses a recording of an alluring song to sink Crunch's ship and get his cereal.
• The Bones Coffee flavor "Salty Siren" features a mermaid in the arms of a skeletal sailor, a sunken ship (presumably the sailor's) in the background.

Animation

• Happy Heroes: The mermaid in Season 4 episode 10 has a beautiful singing voice that can manipulate water. Big M. attempts to use this to his advantage, having the mermaid conjure up a giant wave to flood a ship and hurt its passengers.
• Mermaid, a Russian animated short, is about a rusalka, a mythological Russian creature that is basically a cross between a mermaid and a siren. It lives in the water like a mermaid, but it sings and lures men to their deaths like a siren. It also has a fully human body, like a siren.

Anime and Manga

• Bakugan: Sirenoid is quite clearly based off of a mermaid.
• Berserk: The Merrow are an all-female race of mermaids who fight using their voices, which Isma's mother calls "singing". They once fought their Arch-Enemy, the Sea God, and managed to seal it away in an island, but the island's residents demonized them for their actions — even extending their Fantastic Racism to Isma, who is half-Merrow through her mother. When the Sea God is eventually freed, the Merrow emerge to fight it again, this time aided by Guts' group. Guts manages to kill the Sea God, and out of gratitude, the Merrow gives Guts and his group a new ship.
• Delicious in Dungeon: mermaids can sing songs that hypnotize those who hear it to drag them into water. Apparently they dislike others joining on their song, as Laios finds out when he tries singing along.
• Doraemon: Nobita's Great Adventure into the Underworld: Doraemon and friends infiltrate the Demon World, where they encounter mermaids which entices their victims with songs, drawing them from the skies into the ocean where they'll be devoured by giant monster whales.
• Hell Teacher Nube: Hayame is yet another mermaid with the ability to create Magic Music.
• Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, being loosely based on "The Little Mermaid", revolves around the idea of mermaids being good singers.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi: Akira Okouchi's pactio name is Siren Valida, while her outfit is more clearly mermaid-themed than harpie.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica: The witch Oktavia von Seckendorff is an Eldritch Abomination resembling a weird cross between a mermaid and an orchestra conductor. Possibly an accidental example, however, because there are symbolic reasons for this form. Her backstory resembles The Little Mermaid, but with a musician friend in place of the prince.
• In one of the Puyo Puyo anime shorts, Serilly the mermaid mimics a siren to bring her some friends. Her singing proves beautiful enough to start attracting people to her... then Harpy comes to Serilly and thinks her singing voice needs work. That wouldn't be a problem, but Harpy herself is notorious for being a terrible singer.
• Sailor Moon: Sailor Aluminum Seiren is named for a Siren but is clearly filled with mermaid influences, and comes from Planet Mermaid. An overall blue color scheme, a seashell charm on her choker, her attack, Galactia Tsunami, is water based. In the anime it is just her throwing juice boxes and water bottles. Her anime civilian name, Reiko Aya, even contains a pun on Mermaid.
• Rosario + Vampire: Averted, as Mermaids and Sirens are completely different monsters. The mermaids also never sing (they instead suck the life energy of people), while the Sirens do and from what we see can see from their true form, they are birdlike, resembling angels.

Art

• The Fisherman and the Siren, an 1858 painting by Frederic Leighton, has a siren with a fish-tail seducing a young man.

Card Games

• Magic: The Gathering goes back and forth with this trope. On the one hand, there's the merfolk card Seasinger, which is modeled after a mermaid and allows its player to take control of another player's card, representing the siren's enthralling song. On the other, they have a separate "siren" creature type, which is represented by winged humanoids instead.
  • The Sirens of Theros Avert this trope entirely, as they are a hybrid of Greek Sirens and Harpies, having vulture-like wings and talons, and such beautiful singing voices that shipwreck victims don't care.
  • Even further averted on Ixalan. Like on Theros, Ixalan sirens are winged, and there is a card showing a siren seducing a merfolk with song, as if to defy this trope outright.
• Cardfight!! Vanguard has the clan Bermuda Triangle — a clan of Mermaid Idol Singers. Their similar counterpart are the Battle Sirens from the Aqua Force clan, which are mermaids and uses their voices for various effects, from attacking to boosting their soldiers.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! has Deep Sea Diva, a mermaid with a heavy musical motif that can summon other monsters to it from the deck like a siren.

Comic Books

• Arawn: As part of his trial of water, Arawn is captured by a monstrous mermaid who petrifies and devours men. He manages to turn her power against herself before smashing her face into a thousand fragments.
• The Odyssey:
  • One French adaptation has a bird-woman siren dive underwater.... at which point her feathers seamlessly turn into fins.
  • Another adaptation, in this case one issue of the Belgian comic Les Centaures, features mermaid-like sirens even if the setting is (fairly) loyal to classical Greece.
• The Legend of Wonder Woman (2016): Themyscira is home to all the monsters and creatures from Classical Mythology, save for sirens which are replaced by mermaids that try to lure, attack and drown Steve Trevor.

Fan Works

• Mega Man: Defender of the Human Race: In addition to a plasma staff, Splash Woman can attract robots to her.
• RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse: The (chronologically) first story features some sirens who get quite stroppy when one of the alternate Mane Six mistakes them for seaponies, and insists that they are something quite different. They're right; see Western Animation for details.

Films — Animation

• The Little Mermaid (1989): Ariel has a beautiful singing voice. Most Disney heroines do, but here it's actually a plot point, since the Big Bad's price for changing her into a human is her beautiful voice. However, this is taken from the original story^note In the book her voice was just a fee and there was no mention of any singing.. Used in a more direct fashion when Ursula transforms herself into a human woman and uses Ariel's voice to cast a spell on Eric, hypnotizing him.
• In Coraline, the Other Spink sings the line "I'm known as the siren of all seven seas" while dressed as a mermaid.
• In Ice Age: Continental Drift, sirens appear as amphibious lungfish, the prehistoric equivalent of mermaids.
• In My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rainbow Rocks, the Dazzlings' original Siren forms resemble hippocampi or merhorses. When they appear in the parent cartoon, however, they're flying rather than water-based.
• My Little Pony: The Movie (2017) inverts this, where the seaponies have to be taught how to sing and dance by the land based ponies.

Films — Live-Action

• In Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, mermaids also have beautiful singing voice and lure men to death. And one of the mermaids is named Syrena. Justified because it's a human who names her that on the fly so she's viewed as less of a creature.
• Mermaids 2003: Venus, one of the mermaid sisters, is a Siren and able to hypnotize men though with her dancing and her eyes instead of singing. Her powers however don't work if someone knows that she's a Siren.
• The comedy Miranda (1948) has the titular mermaid also getting a beautiful singing voice that she uses to wow everyone when she's taken on a trip to the London opera.
• The horror film Killer Mermaid features an evil mermaid as its monster — but she also has powers of a Siren. Namely she hypnotises men with her singing and a quote about "the silence of the Sirens" is used to describe her.
• The Last Jedi has a really weird variant in the form of creatures called thala-sirens that live near the Jedi Temple on Ahch-To and provide Luke with green milk. Unlike mermaids or classical sirens, these critters aren't humanoid at all — but they do resemble manatees, which are often considered a major inspiration for mermaid stories.
• The Lighthouse features a mermaid who, depending on who you ask, may or may not be a siren to the younger character.
• Ondine: Sirens Are Selkies, in this case. Ondine has a haunting singing voice that is said to hypnotize lobsters and fish into the nets.

Literature

• Sirena: The heroine is one of the actual Greek sirens... and a mermaid. Of course, even the humans of her time have gotten a lot of the facts wrong about her and her fellow myths.
• In the Anita Blake series, sirens are described as super-powerful mermaids, able to control even their own kind with the power of their voices.
• Island of the Aunts: Parodied: a mermaid tried to make money by causing a ship to sink, enchanting the captain with her hypnotizing singing voice. Sadly, the times had changed and, instead of gold and treasures, the ship she caused to sink had oil on board.
• Xanth: In The Source of Magic, the Siren is a mermaid with a voice that lures all men who hear it to her.
• In Magic By The Lake, by Edgar Eagar, the children go on an adventure with a mermaid who "sings down a ship." Martha chastises her for luring men to their deaths.
• Harry Potter
  • A tie-in book describes three subspecies of merpeople, one of which is the sirens. They live in the warmer waters of Greece and are the more beautiful kind that human art tends to depict; the other kinds are, from a human perspective, ugly. All merpeople apparently have a love of music, though.
  • There's also a quirk to their music: outside of water, merpeople's voices are loud, unpleasant screeching that humans can only understand if they've learned it as a separate language (Mermish). Underwater, it becomes the hauntingly beautiful music that humans can understand just by hearing it.
  • There's also a variant: the Scottish merfolk in Goblet of Fire are called "selkies," which are likewise a different creature in actual mythology. The third type, Irish merrows, actually are mermaids in folkloric tradition.
• In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, mermen and mermaids sing at the Pevensies coronation and the singing is described as haunting and enchanting.
• In the original story of The Little Mermaid, the mermaid's older sisters like to go to the surface during dangerous storms and sing to ships that are likely to go under. The songs are supposed to comfort the sailors and assure them that the undersea world isn't so bad, but the men can't understand them.
• In Siren Novels, by Tricia Rayburn, the sirens don't have fins, but they need salt water to survive and can stay under water for long periods of time.
• In Lost Voices by Sarah Porter, the main characters are basically humans turned into mermaids, but are given magical voices like the sirens, which they use to lure humans to their deaths. These mermaids/sirens are all formerly human girls who were abused or neglected, and take vengeance on humanity for the mistreatment in their previous lives by sinking ships and drowning people.
• Septimus Heap: The Syren is described as a mermaid, and she uses her song for malicious purposes.
• In Voyage of the Basset, the mermaids can sing with haunting beauty. In a variation on the usual presentation, they're actually friendly and sing to get their pet sea serpent to save boats from being dashed on the rocks.
• Dream Girl: The mermaid Áine seduces rapists and murderers by sneaking into their rooms at night and singing to them (basically hypnotizing them), then "accidentally" bumping into them on the street and causing them to fall in love with her and her "quirky" ways. Then she kills them and drinks their blood.
• In Watersong, by Amanda Hocking, sirens (descendants of the Muses who were cursed by Demeter) are a combination of the classical versions of mermaids and sirens. They have three different forms: On land, they're human. In seawater, they're half-human, half-fish. When they need to fly or (more importantly) feed on the mortal men they lure with their songs, they're bird-women. They have beautiful voices and appearances only in their first two forms; the third form is a case of One-Winged Angel.
• Into the Drowning Deep: Mermaids are capable of perfectly mimicking any sound they hear, such as whale song and human speech, in order to lure prey in. Eventually, they are designated as sirens because mermaid implies they are all female. The study of mermaids is also known as sirenology.
• In the book series And Then I Turned Into a Mermaid, sirens are depicted as being a combination of their songbird and mermaid depictions, being described as mermaids with wings. However, most of them had to cut them off in order to blend in among the humans.
• Xanadu (Storyverse): All of the transformed sirens who retain the ability to speak become exceptional singers and gain the ability to create magic through their song.
• In The Mermaid Summer, the mermaid's main use for her voice is forcing people who get on her bad side to crash their boats.
• In Mermaid Moon, mermaids use their magical voices to force sailors to jump into the sea and drown. Sanna thinks this is a horrible practice, even though her Aunt Shusha has told her that sailors rape and murder mermaids.

Live-Action TV

• H₂O: Just Add Water: Cleo had a reaction to the full moon's reflection and gained a singing voice that is able to hypnotize all the boys in town. Lewis explains that "she's a Siren, just like the mermaids in mythology whose singing lured sailors to their deaths". Funnily enough that's the only episode of the show that doesn't feature the girls transforming into their mermaid forms.
  • Mako Mermaids: An H₂O Adventure: Sirena once heard a North Atlantic mermaid's siren song on an online video and became a siren herself. In this case, she becomes violent and possessive of David, attempting to lure him to the ocean so they can be together forever (which will erase his memories and eventually kill him), took exception to her friends trying to stop her, and gained poofy hair. Mimmi and Ondina have to drown out her siren song with their own magic singing voices, and it's mentioned that siren songs are (rightfully) forbidden for South Australian mermaids.
• Charmed (1998) has a notable subversion. The fifth season featured two episodes pretty close together, one dealing with a mermaid and the other dealing with a Siren. Though in this case the Siren doesn't really match mythology, either — she still has hypnotic singing, but looks fully human and is actually a vengeful dead woman who comes back as a demon.
• Aquaman: The pilot for the otherwise unaired TV show introduces what probably would have been recurring enemies — Sirens that were basically really ugly mermaids.
• Once Upon a Time: Averted. The mermaids are separate creatures from sirens. A siren shows up in the episode What Happened to Frederick, appearing as a beautiful shapeshifting lady in a lake. Mermaids (including Ariel) show up in Neverland. However, mermaids do have alluring singing voices, and at least one is encouraged by her father to lure ships onto rocks.
• The Faerie Tale Theatre adaptation of "The Little Mermaid" has a scene where the mermaids discuss how humans can't seem to tell mermaids from sirens, though they are completely separate species.
• Siren: A subset of the mermaids have a captivating song, which can have extreme or even deadly effects on humans.
• Fantasy Island (2021): Here, mermaids also draw mortals to them like sirens, which Isla does with Ruby. It's also noted (by Elena, a Latina) that in Spanish the word for mermaid is "sirena", thus the whole language does this.

Mythology

• In Irish folklore, merrow were beautiful mermaids who fell in love with mortal men and bewitched them into following them beneath the sea... where they used their magic to keep their husbands alive under the sea so they could live Happily Ever After. According to some stories, they could take on human form and live on land for a while, but eventually they would want to return to the sea, and so would ultimately move the family back home.
• The Sirena of the Philippines appear to be directly inspired by this trope, being mermaid-like creatures who sing lovely songs to lure people to their watery graves. They have a few cousins, however, including the Siyokoy (a male variant that looks more like a resident of Innsmouth than a merman) and the Mambubuno (a two-tailed merperson which comes in male and female variants, lives in caves and prefers to put its prey in a trance as its "spouse" over killing them).
• Averted in Slavic folklore — while mermaids are present, the relevant creature is Sirin — one of the birds of Paradise, which possesses bird body, but woman's face and breasts, as well as enthralling song.

Pinball

• Fathom: The mermaids don't do any singing, but they definitely take sadistic glee in leading divers to their watery doom.

Tabletop Games

• In Dungeons & Dragons, sirens are aquatic creatures with an enchanting song, a humanoid torso and the tail of a shark or serpentine fish.
  • 1e and 2e averted this trope, depicting "sirines" as completely human-looking and distinct from merfolk, which had no special song-related powers. 3e split the difference, offering merfolk that still lacked innate song-based powers, but had Bard as their favored class.
• Pathfinder, on the other hand, goes back to mythology and makes its sirens woman-headed birds and well-distinct from the setting's mermaids.
• In Rifts, the Psiren is a creation of the Lord of the Deep, and can have the lower half or either a fish or a sea lion.

Theater

• Shakespeare:
  • In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Oberon's story of the magic flower for the love potion includes a mermaid's beautiful singing, though she calms the sea rather than allures anyone to death.
  • The Comedy of Errors alludes to this trope with the line "I'll stop mine ears against the mermaid's song."
  • In Henry VI Part 3, Gloucester claims that "I'll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall."

Video Games

• Luminous Arc 3: Elulu's job class is Siren, but also bears a lot of traits similar to mermaids.
• Mabinogi: The Sirens fit this to a tee. If you need an image, you don't need to look for one, they're almost the same as the above picture from Luminous Arc (however, they are NOT a rip-off). And they're bad guys.
• The Legend of Zelda: In a little bit of Fridge Brilliance, the Zora (read: merfolk-like fish people) evolve over time into the Rito (bird folk). Medli, one of the main Rito in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, even plays a harp, though luckily not to coerce anyone to their doom.
• Castlevania: Averted; the Siren is a Palette Swap of the Harpy enemy, making them birdlike.
• Fable: Played with. A Siren appears underwater, but with legs instead of a mermaid's tail.
• God of War: Averted, as sirens are land-dwelling (levitating) demons.
• Defense of the Ancients includes a Siren hero whose ultimate spell is to sing the opposition to sleep and whose character model is a mermaid.
• Legend of Mana: Averted but acknowledged. Mermaids and Sirens are different species, mermaids being fish-tailed humanoids who can teleport via bubbles and sirens being beautiful harpy-like creatures that look like a cross between birds of paradise and women. The two species are friendly with each other, however, and are implied to be distantly related in some way. Both also seem to share a passion for singing around the ocean.
• The Final Fantasy series averts this, with Siren being an uncommonly recurring character (often a summon) that usually just resembles a beautiful woman. Final Fantasy VIII actually has more of a bird-like appearance with feathery details including long hair styled like wings — though its summoning sequence does feature it appearing on a rock jutting out of the sea.
• Mega Man 9: Referenced with Splash Woman, who's basically a robot mermaid and has an attack involving singing to summon fish to attack Mega Man.
• Pokémon Sun and Moon: Primarina, Popplio's final evolution, is referred to as a sea lion and a mermaid, but also has the distinctive singing feature of sirens. It is also part Fairy-type.
• Soul Sacrifice Delta: Downplayed with the Siren, an Archfiend with fish scales and musical attacks, but has a pair of legs instead of a tail.
• Dragon's Dogma: Averted: the Sirens of Bitterblack Isle harken back to the original portrayal of sirens, being a Palette Swap of harpies.
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: Sirens (and their stronger kin, the Lamias and Ekhidnas) appear this way... at least at a distance. In fact, their beautiful female upper bodies are a means of luring prey (read, unwary sailors) along with their voices. The deception drops when they attack, revealing the true, monstrous form beneath. They can both swim and fly but are rendered practically defenseless if knocked onto solid ground.
• Lone Siren: The titular Siren is actually a mermaid.
• In Soda Dungeon, the Water Temple mermaids are surrounded by hearts. Sirens appear as undead mermaids. In the Lair of Despair, the Harp mermaid sits on a rock and plays the harp like a Siren.
• Notable aversion in Heroes of Might and Magic 3. Mermaids are beautiful half-women half-fish creatures who give your army a luck bonus if you find them, while Sirens are the monstrous harpy-like monsters from Greek legend, who eat 30% of your army, which does give you experience in return.
• World of Warcraft:
  • Naga sirens are a caster class of naga that specialize in hypnotism, specifically through their alluring voices. They play with this, since they have the general body shape of a mermaid and are clearly trying to evoke that image, but are actually aquatic Snake People. The fins on their head do make them more fishlike however, unlike the more powerful Naga Sea Witches that are Gorgeous Gorgons with a head of snake hair.
  • Battle for Azeroth somewhat confusingly introduced actual sirens as a separate creature, which lure men to their death with their singing. Here they have birdlike wings for arms but a fish tail, combining the two popular depictions into one Composite Character.
• The posters for the In-Universe Siren Serenade in Bendy and the Ink Machine cartoon show Alice Angel as a mermaid.
• Dragalia Lost: Averted; although Siren lives near the ocean and has an association with water, she has legs and is perfectly capable of living on land.
• Panel de Pon: Referenced by Neris, a mermaid-like water fairy whose name means "siren" backwards and who is said to like singing.
• Shantae and the Seven Sirens: They're called "sirens" in the story, and almost all of them are mermaid-like creatures, with the majority of them having the upper body of a cute girl or beautiful woman attached to a lower body based on some form of aquatic life. The seeming exception to this is the Angler Fish Siren, who just looks like an anthropomorphicized anglerfish.

Webcomics

• In Hark! A Vagrant, by Kate Beaton, a mermaid aims to drown a sailor with her frilly singin'. Mermaids matching this trope make a few other appearances, including one longer story arc (where no mermaid singing is heard, but is referred to, along with their tendency to drown people).
• In MYth, Amphitrite is a subvertion. Amphitrite is pretty much a mermaid (and in side art, she's drawed with a fish tail, to boot) but she's actually deaf tone and a horrible singer. Even the Muses' instructor, Apollo, couldn't help her and he had to made up the whole "you sing better underwater" to avoid her singing disturb land and Olympus. But now, the underwater realm have to suffer her.
• In Siren's Lament, they prefer "siren" over "mermaid". Seemingly as a more politically correct term.
• The Noordegraaf Files: Inverted, as sirens are stated to be bird people, and the whole "why we refer to mermaids as sirens" thing explained above is then stated. The closest thing to mermaids are Nereids, which are half-squid, not half-fish.

Web Original

• In The Dragon Wars Saga, the chief songstress of the merfolk clan encountered early on is named Sirin and the mermaids have command of some kind of vocal music.
• In the webseries "Mermaid Miracles", the sirens are mermaids bent on the destruction of the human race.
• Averted in this creepypasta where the protagonist is a young girl who dreams about being a beautiful mermaid, but is actually a monstrous siren.

Western Animation

• American Dragon: Jake Long: Averted, as both mermaids and sirens are present and are quite different from one another.
• Arthur: Averted in the episode where D.W. retells The Odyssey, with herself as Odysseus. The sirens are just random girls dancing to "Crazy Bus," a song that D.W. became obsessed with in an earlier episode.
• Disenchantment: Played With — the mermaids aren't called sirens, but play the siren legend totally straight, to the point where The Odyssey's "wax or tied up" strategy is used to combat them. Later subverted when it turns out that they're actually the walruses from a neighbouring island that are the sirens.
• DuckTales (1987): Averted in "Home Sweet Homer". The Sirens turn out to be disembodied heads mounted on tentacles, which are atop the head of a much larger, uglier monster.
• Elena of Avalor: The Sirenas, a race of mermaids who charm sailors and sink ships with their song.
• Family Guy: In one episode, Peter remembers how he lured sailors to their death with his siren song... dressed as a mermaid.
• The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack: Coincidence or not, the mermaid queen reincarnates into a flying version called a "skymaid", becoming more like a siren. This could also have been a reference to the original ending of "The Little Mermaid".
• My Little Pony 'n Friends: "Rescue At Midnight Castle" features the Seaponies, the first characters to get a song. It's very reminiscent of a Busby Berkeley Number, and they would always appear singing a chord of "shoo be doo" in the remainder of the episodes.
• Popeye: One of the King Features cartoons has Popeye mesmerized by a siren who's basically a wily mermaid with a harp; it takes Olive to snap him out of it.
• The Simpsons: In Tales from the Public Domain when Homer retells the story of The Odyssey, Homer (as Odysseus) and his army are led to the Island of Sirens who sing a parody of "Copacabana". However, they are turned away when Sirens turn out to be Patty and Selma.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: The sirens from “The Bikini Bottom Triangle” look exactly like mermaids, but for some reason, they are about the same size as any typical Bikini Bottom resident.
• ThunderCats: Played very straight when the mermaid appears; her song entrances Tigra, and the obvious purpose of this is to lure him to her and get him to hold still so she can feed on him; the shot of her vampiric fangs right before the break to a commercial is one of the most chilling in the series.
• Jason And The Heroes Of Mount Olympus: The sirens are not only depicted as mermaids, but also live on land and move around via Ghostly Glide.

Real Life

• This trope is so widespread that many languages simply do not have distinct words for sirens and mermaids — in Spanish, French, Italian, Polish, Latin, Romanian and Portuguese, the word for mermaid is respectively sirena, sirène, sirena, syrena, syreni, sirenă and sereia.
  • Averted in Finnish, where seireeni is explicitly a woman-waterfowl hybrid (usually a swan). A woman-eagle hybrid is harpyia. A mermaid is merenneito, maiden-of-sea. Likewise in Russian "Сирин" (sirin) is a woman-bird hybrid which has inherited the etymological and the musical aspect.
  • German even has three different words for mermaids — "nixe" (probably etymologically a "water spirit"), "sirene" and "meerjungfrau" ("ocean virgin"). According to The Other Wiki, the first one would be approximately the siren^note Though they are a separate creature with their origins in Germanic folklore (nobody except a poet when hearing "sirene" will think other than "police siren", thus that word is obsolete) but the two are used as effective synonyms.
• It's popularly held that manatees (Order Sirenia) are often mistaken for mermaids. Although manatees don't look very much like humans, they do have their nipples located under their flippers, which might cause them to be mistaken for a woman.
• The salamander genus Siren was also named in reference to this trope—it's the only animal that has human-like arms and a fish-like tail.
• December Diamonds, a company that makes mermaid ornaments, has one mermaid ornament whose female half dresses like a cop. They call her "Siren".
• There is a congenital deformity called Sirenomelia, in which the legs are fused together like a mermaid's, and parts of the urinary, lower digestive, and reproductive systems fail to develop properly. Most individuals with this condition die before or shortly after birth; to date only a handful of survivors are known.
• The Starbucks coffee house chain uses a half-woman, half-fish creature for their logo and mascot, which they say is a siren rather than a mermaid due to the tails. The image is likely based upon the mythological figure of Melusine, who was a woman with two snake or fish tails. It's easier to see in their original logo, which is in full view and much less stylized.

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