Using a Goddess name instead of letters
 

Hi yeah, I'm the dreaded newbie..

I have a question for you all. I heard that in the 50's or so, Greek Goddess names were used for sorority names, instead of letters which are used now. Is this true, and can anyone point me in the direction of somewhere that actually tells me this, officially? I've done searching on google with no luck, and I've been lurking these boards for a while and everyone here seems to know their stuff, so I was like hey, why not ask there? Thanks. :D

I can tell you that since the turn of the last century the sororities (social and professional) up here all used greek letters - the only exceptions were not actually sororities but women's dining societies but those were from the 1860s and 70s and even then the names were all over the place: Greek or Roman gods or goddesses, Hebrew phrases from the Bible, Animals, or even Royalty...

Re: Using a Goddess name instead of letters
 

I've never heard this relative to Delta.

Some NPC groups have patronesses:
Kappa Kappa Gamma -- Athena
Zeta Tau Alpha -- Themis
Alpha Chi Omega -- Hera

I think Alpha Sigma Alpha has a classical "exemplar" (don't have time to look it up right now). And doesn't Tri-Delta use Poseidon?

AGDAlum

Re: Using a Goddess name instead of letters
 

Welcome to Greekchat.

My guess is that your search has been without luck because Greek letter names have been the rule (although not without exception) since Phi Beta Kappa was founded in 1776.

There have been some exceptions, of course. Alpha Delta Pi started out as the Adelphian Society, Phi Mu began as the Philomathean Society and Pi Beta Phi was founded as I.C. Sorosis, for example. All such groups now use Greek letter names, however; Alpha Delta Pi was the last of these three groups to make that change in 1905.

Then there are those groups that don't use Greek letter names at all, like Acacia, FarmHouse and Triangle (all fraternities). As the name of my own Fraternity suggests, we were once simply The Sinfonia Fraternity.

But as for sororities named after Greek goddesses, I only know of one: Ceres, an agriculture-based fraternity for women founded in 1985.

There well may be some local sororities named after Greek (or other goddesses), but I am not aware of any.

Our exemplars are Christ, King Asa, St Valentine and Hermes - who is Greek but is a god rather than a goddess.

I stand to be corrected by a Kappa, but I think that Ms. MysticCat would remind me that Kappa uses her Roman name: Minerva.

Maybe we do, maybe we don't. I'll never tell.