One Steve Limit / Myths & Religion

• A very old exception is the medieval legend of Tristan and Isolde contains two characters named Isolde, both of whom pursue a romance with Tristan. The two are typically called "Isolde of Ireland" and "Isolde of Brittany" to minimize confusion.
• Arthurian Legend:
  • There were at least four Elaines, three of which were associated with Lancelot: Elaine of Benoic (his mother), Elaine of Astolat (the Lady of Shalott), and Elain of Carbonek (the mother of Galahad). The last was one of Arthur's interchangeable third half-sisters, and to make matters more confusing, T.H. White combined Astolat and Carbenok in The Once and Future King. Yet another Elaine was Percival's mother-in-law.
  • There were also three Guineveres, two of which were half-sisters/twins known as the "True Guinevere" and the "False Guinevere." The True Guinevere was Arthur's wife, although the false one switched places with her on at least one occasion. Partly this is because the French re-tellings adapted the original Old Welsh names of the sisters Gwenhwyfar and Gwenhwyfach in such a manner that they became identical - although, given that these names mean "Gwenhwy the Greater" and "Gwenhwy the Lesser", respectively, it's not really much better.
  • In a particularly egregious case, there were two knights named Sir Yvain/Owain... and they were half-brothers. Good going, Dad. One is usually just called Yvain, while the younger, illegitimate one is called Sir Yvain the Adventurous or, more unfortunately, Sir Yvain the Bastard.
  • Aversions of this and even One-Mario Limit, or the presence of weirdly similar names for no apparent reason, are in fact rather common in Arthurian legend; over the centuries, just to give some other, and the most egregious examples, there has been at least one Sir Kay, two knights named Sir Gaheris, one Mordred, several people named Morgan, three Galahads (or, counting Lancelot’s childhood name and his ancestor Galahad, five), and even a few Arthurs who are completely different people from the more important carriers of their names who you are more likely to actually know or care about. This, translation issues, and nonstandard spelling has resulted in quite a few possible Decomposite Characters and instances of unintentional Composite Character creation, if not both (as could have happened with Morgan Le Fey and Morgause), and even the most well-read scholars shrugging on whether some characters are supposed to be the same as another or not.
• The Bible: Lots of names are repeated; for example, about six women named Mary are in the New Testament, although different sources disagree on who they are. Other people are referred to by their family name, so several Herodian rulers are all called "Herod". And in some cases, names were originally different end up being rendered the same way in translation (e.g. a male "Noach" and a female "Noah" both being called "Noah" in English). For this reason, devotional life and adaptations tend to find ways to distinguish the Steves.
  • This is particularly important among the Apostles of Jesus:
    • Two Simons; this is relatively easy, since one of them was also known as Peter, and became St. Peter. The other was typically knows as "Simon the Cannanite" or "Simon the Zealot".
    • Two Judases, though one was typically known as "Thaddeus", or "Judas, son of James". "Thaddeus" was also referred to as "Judas", and would later simply be shortened to "Jude" to differentiate him from Judas Iscariot. At one point in John's gospel, the narrator has to clarify, "Judas (not Iscariot) said..."
    • Two Jameses, and this is the complicated one; they'd simply be known as James the Great (son of Zebedee; also brother of Apostle John, also refered to as "son of Zebedee") and James the Lesser (son of Alphaeus). In scripture, both are frequently referred to simply as "James", with no additions to differentiate them.
    • John the Apostle also shares a name with John the Baptist, who appears early in the gospels.
  • Translations of the Old Testament in some languages give Joshua the same name as Jesus. This is because Joshua's Hebrew name, Yehoshua, was sometimes translated via the worn-down form Yeshua, which is approximated as Iesous in Greek. Jesus' name in the original Greek New Testament is also Iesous, and in fact Yeshua was probably his actual given name.
  • There are also two major Josephs in the Bible: Jacob's son in Genesis, and the husband of Jesus's mother in the New Testament. Scholars speculate that Matthew's Gospel did this intentionally to highlight Jesus's place in the Jewish tradition: the two Josephs also have prophetic dreams, and lead their families to safety in Egypt for a time.
  • There are also King Saul and Saul of Tarsus, later called Paul.
• The Qur'an and its associated hadith:
  • Utterly averted. The Arabs, despite having a language with an astronomical number of nouns, apparently have a small pool of personal names even before the advent of Islam, but when the religion became more known, the rule gets turned up a notch. Oh, patronymics don't really help either, since patriarchs also have the same common names, and it only becomes useful if you try to track the family line to several generations above (hence why most Arabic names to this day can get ridiculously long; you have to come to the point where you won't confuse that person with someone else). Plus, many of the Biblical characters and events are also recognized in Islam, and with it its utter aversion of the One Steve Limit.
  • Muhammad (Arabic for "most praiseworthy one") was already a very common name in the Arabian Peninsula before the prophet's time. In addition to the prophet, two of the prophet's companions are both named Muhammad, for example (ibn Abu Bakr and ibn Maslamah).
  • The Quran shows what happens when you have two different individuals with the same name and then confusing the two. The Quran doesn't mention personal names a lot, especially women, who are generally referred as "[insert name here]'s wife/sister/mother" or "the woman [who did] this [insert event name here]". However, Jesus' mother, as in the Virgin Mary, is not only named (in its Arabic form, Maryam, obviously), but gets a whole chapter devoted to her.^note Though, ironically, devotion to Mary by Muslims, while exists, is not as ubiquitous as Catholics and Orthodox, who have extreme devotion, hence the many "Our Lady of [insert name here]" titles. Meanwhile, Moses' sister, Miriam (whose Arabic form is also Maryam), is not named in the Quran, but, apparently, the writers still thought of her name as Miriam, because both of Mary and Miriam's fathers are named Amram‒or Imran in Arabic (in the Bible, only Miriam's was named Amram; Mary's father was called Joachim). In fact, there was once a long debate on which Amram is referred to in the Quranic chapter "The House of Imran". The scholars settled on Joachim/Mary's father.
  • According to the verse 19:7–10, Yahya (John the Baptist) was the the first to receive this name.
• In Greek Mythology:
  • Ajax the Great (Ajax son of Telamon) and Ajax the Lesser (Ajax of Locris) were both Greek warlords in The Trojan War, and figure in The Iliad.
  • Zeus has two sons named Sarpedon; one is the son of Europa and brother to Minos and Rhadamanthys and the other is the son of Laomedia and a hero in the Trojan War.
  • Zeus has two daughters named Thalia, one of the muses and one of the Charities.
  • The titaness Tethys is often confused with Thetis, the mother of Achilles, who is her granddaughter.
  • Cronos was the leader of the titans, Chronos was the personification of time. The former is also sometimes spelled Cronus or Kronos, while the latter is also spelled Chronus or Khronos. Which doesn't really help matters. Even the Greeks got them confused from time to time, and by the Renaissance the figure of Father Time was usually depicted as carrying a scythe, the weapon the other Cronos used to castrate Uranus.
  • The rule also gets trampled by the dozen mythical figures named Eurypylus. Two of them fought on opposite sides of the Trojan War. At the same time, a third one was among the suitors of Penelope. One generation back, another Eurypylus had helped Heracles sack Troy. Yet another was a son of Heracles, not to be confused with the one who was killed by Heracles... and so on.
  • The name Hippodamia is shared between a dozen of women including two of the fifty Danaids.
  • King Diomedes of Thrace was a villain who would feed people to his man-eating mares and was eventually killed by Heracles. Later, another Diomedes became a hero who fought on the Greeks' side during the Trojan War and became famous for wounding both Aphrodite and Ares.
  • One Euryale was the sister of Medusa. Another was the daughter of King Minos and was the possible mother of Orion. Another was one of the Amazons.
  • There's Aeolus, son of Hippotes, master of the Winds and Aoleus, son of Hellen, ruler of Thessaly. Weirdly enough both have a daughter named Canace. Some authors confused the two including Hyginus who mistakenly says that Odysseus met the son of Hellen.
• Averted with Robin Hood. We have both Little John and Prince John, and Will Stuteley and Will Scarlet.
• One Russian fairy tale centered around two identical brothers who were both named Ivan. Also, nearly every male protagonist in Russian fairy tales is an Ivan.
  • There are also some versions of a fairy tale involving Ivan Tsarevich (son of the Tsar), Ivan the Maid's Son, and Ivan Bykovich (the Cow's Son). They fight three dragons, all called Chudo-Yudo.
• In Norse Mythology, we have the more famous Loki son of Laufey, a giant who lives with the gods in Asgård, and the less famous giant Utgarda-Loki, who lives in the castle of Utgard in Jotunheim. There's also Logi, when he is separate from Loki Laufeyson (the word (and sometimes name) Logi isn't actually related to the name Loki—it means something like 'destroying fire'—but sounds close enough that even the Norse seems to have gotten them mixed up at times).
• Celtic Mythology: in the surviving corpus of Irish mythology, there are at least five Ailils, two Áines, and around three Brídes. Because the timeline is confusing and contradictory at the best of times, it can be hard to determine which character is being referenced in a given story, and many scholars have intentionally or accidentally conflated some of them together.
  • The Ulster Cycle also has two Ferguses. The trope is specifically defied when Medb renames all her sons Máine, because she was told her son Máine would kill Conchobar. And then subverted again, when one of them kills the wrong Conchobar.

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