Fascinating legends behind those beautiful mermaids 

If you are a Disney movie fan, then you probably loved the tale of Ariel, a charming and courageous young mermaid princess with a passion for exploration. In The Little Mermaid, an American animated movie released in 1989, Walt Disney Pictures brought to life iconic mermaids from imagination to the silver screen. Charles J. S Thompson, a British physician and writer, described mermaids as having “moon faces and hair like a woman's, but their hands and feet were in their bellies, and they had tails like fishes” in his book The Mystery and Lore of Monsters (2010). The masculine counterparts of mermaids are known as merman. These marine half-humanoid creatures are figments of human imagination. Well, let's dive into the mythological history of mermaids and find their real-world origin stories. 

The legend of Atargatis  
Assyria (known as Syria today) is where the earliest record of mermaids was discovered, around 1000 BC. According to Assyrian mythology, their lovely goddess of fertility Atargatis threw herself into a lake and became a mermaid. The sad tales surrounding Atargatis' transformation into a mermaid go like this. 

Great northern Syrian goddess Atargatis fell in love with a mortal shepherd named Hadad, and the two eventually gave birth to a daughter named Semiramis. One unfortunate day Atargatis accidentally caused the death of her consort Hadad. Unable to cope with her remorse and guilt for killing Hadad, she drowned herself in a lake. The lake waters could not contain her beauty and transformed her into a mermaid, a woman with a fishtail. Even today, Syrians worship Atargatis along with Hadad at Hierapolis (modern-day Manbij), northeast of Aleppo in Syria.  

Mermaids in different cultures 
Mermaids and mermen, together known as merfolk, appear in different legends and mythology, beginning with Syrian Atargatis. Babylonian deity Era or Oannes was believed to be half-human and half-fish for thousands of years. The merman sea messenger Triton appears in Greek mythology. According to another Greek folktale, Thessalonike, the sister of Alexander the Great, was transformed into a mermaid and continued to exist in the Aegean Sea after she died in 295 BC. 

In Chinese folklore, mermaids are attractive, and have the magical power to turn their tears into pearls. Like the Chinese, Korean mermaid folklore sees the sea maidens as a sign of good fortune and reveres them as deities who foretells storms at sea and impending doom. 

On the contrary, the Japanese version is darker because they believe mermaids are grotesque creatures, and if discovered dead on land, will bring on war. Although their flesh is thought to grant immortality if consumed, sailors stayed away from them as mermaids were evil omens. 

Similarly, British historians regarded mermaids as terrible omen, despite their beauty. They were rumoured to entice sailors and drown them for their amusement or wrath. 

Iara, or Lady of the Waters", from Brazilian legend is thought to be an eternal woman who was responsible for men going missing in the Amazon forest. 

The mistaken identity of sirens  
Mermaids with half woman and half fish are often confused with a similar species called Siren from ancient Greek mythology. Sirens are thought to be terrible monstrous creatures with bodies of half lady and half bird, who sing their melodiously in enticing tunes while perched on rocky outcrops in the sea. By luring sailors to the perilous rocks with their songs, they are believed to trap them and cause shipwrecks. Homer's (Greek poet and artist) epic poem, Odyssey (late 8th or early 7th century BC), mentioned sirens for the first time.