QotW: Who Is Your Favourite Figure from Mythology?

This week I asked you;

Who is your favourite figure from mythology?

As well as the usual places I ask these questions, I also shared this in a couple of extra Discord servers and uni groups because I wanted to get as varied a response as possible, and you did not disappoint!

My original plan was to figure out what characteristics or domains people feel most drawn to, but you guys gave me over 57 different figures! Some of which I disqualified for various reasons. I asked people to give me the name of their figure and which culture or society the myth came from; this was mostly to make researching a bit easier on myself. Some answers were only a name, and if I had more time, I would have happily accepted them, but right now, I had to say no. I also had some people submit characters from Discworld. If I counted Discworld as mythology, I'd also have to count The Lord of the Rings, and I'm not against that, but deciding which literary creations count as mythology and which don't feels like a task I am not qualified to do.

So, I put all of the answers I accepted, all 57 of them, into a table, and started writing a list of traits, domains, and characteristics, and then I realised that this will take me more than a week to work through. That will probably end up as a project I work on over Yule with my partner, mainly so I can take advantage of having 2 weeks off uni.

With that bit of research on hold, I picked an easier thing to look into. Which cultures' myths are more well-known? This is by no means a great piece of scientific research, but I did make a pie chart! I put all the cultures that were mentioned in your answers into a list and counted how many figures were submitted for each.

(I couldn't get all of the labels to show on the pie chart.)

I purposely didn't ask in any of my Classics groups because I knew it would skew the answers a bit, so I promise it wasn't my fellow classics nerds and me who mentioned figures from Greek myths! I did submit three, but none of them was Greek, Roman, or Norse.

Anyway, I've rambled enough! I know why you're here, you want to see the list, so here it is!

Figure
Aeneas	Roman
Ame no Uzume	Shinto
Anansi	Akan and Ashanti
Anubis	Egyptian
Aphrodite	Greek
Apis	Egypt
Arachne	Greek
Artemis	Greek
Asclepius	Greek
Atalanta	Greek
Athena	Greek
Baba Yaga	Slavic
Bast	Egyptian
Baron Samedi	Haitian Vodou
Brigid	Irish
Cailleach / Beira Queen of Winter	Scottish / Irish
Chiron	Greek
Crow	Native American (various)
Coyote	Native American (various)
The Dagda	Irish
Danu	Irish
Demeter	Greek
Gaia	Greek
Hecate	Greek
Hector	Greek
Hel	Norse
Herne the Hunter	English
Hestia	Greek
Hine-nui-te-pō	Māori
Hygieia	Greek
Idunn	Norse
Io	Greek
Khepri	Egyptian
King Arthur	British with local variants
Kokopelli	Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Pueblo
Loki	Norse
Mami Wata	Akan and Ashanti
Medea	Greek
Medusa	Greek
Mermaid of Zennor	Cornish
Mimir	Norse
Obatala	Yoruba
Patroclus	Greek
Penelope	Greek
Persephone	Greek
Poseidon	Greek
Prometheus	Greek
Ratatoskr	Norse
Rhiannon of Dyfed	Welsh
Scottish Devil (names vary)	Scottish
Selkie	Scottish pan celtic
Shiva	Hindu
Sleipnir	Norse
Sun Wukong	Chinese
Themis	Greek
Thoth	Egyptian
Tsukuyomi	Shinto
Tu'er Shen	Chinese

Please do let me know if I got any of these wrong, and if you'd like to see your favourite figure added to my future research into the traits, domains and characteristics, drop a comment below and let me know who it is!

Before I go, would you like to know who my picks were? Hine-nui-te-pō, Medea, and Obatala.

Thank you so much to everyone who took part! Look out for the next question tomorrow!

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Each week, I'll be asking all of you Nooklings a question inspired by my studies and research. There will be no right or wrong answers. Instead, this is an opportunity for you to nerd out and chat with your fellow history and mythology fans. You'll find the Question of the Week every Sunday morning in the History Nook Discord server, as well as on Instagram, Threads, Patreon, and Bluesky. I'll gather your answers and write a blog post featuring them each Saturday.