95 Fun Facts About Sirens

DC Comics' Gotham City Sirens teams Catwoman and Poison Ivy with which third antiheroine?

Harley Quinn joined Catwoman and Poison Ivy in Paul Dini's 2009 series, which put her back in a leading role after years of scarce appearances and ran for 26 issues.

What did Odysseus' crew plug their ears with to avoid hearing the sirens?

Odysseus softened a cake of beeswax in the sun and pressed it into each crewman's ears; he alone listened, his own ears left unplugged.

How did Odysseus hear the sirens' song without being lured to his death?

Tied to the mast on his own orders, Odysseus signalled to be freed once the song reached him; Perimedes and Eurylochus bound him tighter instead.

Which sorceress advised Odysseus on how to survive the sirens?

Circe, who had earlier turned his men into swine on Aeaea, warned Odysseus about the sirens before he sailed and told him how to pass them safely.

Which explorer's ship journal describes three 'sirens' as 'not half as beautiful as they are painted'?

Christopher Columbus logged the three 'sirenas' near Hispaniola in January 1493, on his first voyage home, adding that their faces had something masculine about them.

Which Edgar Allan Poe tale shares its title with a siren?

Ligeia, 'clear-toned', is one of three sirens the poet Lycophron names, beside Parthenope and Leucosia; Homer's Greek implies only two and names neither.

Which musician saved the Argonauts from the sirens by out-playing them on his lyre?

Orpheus raised his lyre and struck up a fast, lively tune that drowned out the sirens' voices until the wind carried the Argo clear; one crewman leapt overboard all the same.

Which goddess saved the Argonaut Butes from the sirens and, in some tellings, bore him a son?

Aphrodite pitied Butes as he swam for the sirens' shore, snatched him from the surf and settled him at Lilybaeum in Sicily; the historian Diodorus makes Eryx their son.

The sirens are most often named as daughters of which river god?

Achelous, the river god who lost a horn wrestling Heracles for a bride, is the sirens' usual father; their mother is variously Terpsichore, Melpomene, Calliope or Sterope of Calydon.

Per Ovid, the sirens were companions of which goddess, and gained wings to search for her when she was abducted?

Persephone's playmates were the sirens, in Ovid: after Hades seized her they prayed for wings to search the seas, and kept their girls' faces and voices so that their song would survive.

The sirens lost a singing contest to which group of goddesses?

The Muses won, plucked out the sirens' feathers and wore them as crowns, Pausanias says; it was Hera who had talked the sirens into the challenge.

According to later ancient authors, what did the sirens do once Odysseus had sailed safely past?

They drowned themselves: Hyginus says the sirens were fated to live only until someone heard their song and sailed on, so when Odysseus escaped they threw themselves into the sea.

Legend says the siren Parthenope washed ashore on the islet under which Naples castle?

Castel dell'Ovo stands on Megaride, once an islet and now joined to the shore; settlers from Cumae are said to have named their first town there Parthenope after her.

In a later Parthenope legend, which volcano did Jupiter turn a lovesick centaur into?

In Neapolitan legend the centaur Vesuvio fell in love with the siren Parthenope; Jupiter turned him into Mount Vesuvius, whose eruptions are said to be his frustrated rage.

Which Roman poet wrote that 'sweet Parthenope', meaning Naples, nurtured him as he wrote?

Virgil ends the Georgics saying 'sweet Parthenope' nurtured him; when he died his remains were carried to Naples, where his epitaph says 'now Parthenope holds me'.

The Sirenusas, islands off the Amalfi Coast said to be the sirens' home, are also known by what name?

Li Galli, 'the cocks', recalls the bird-bodied sirens of Greek art; the geographer Strabo already knew the rocky islets off this coast as the Sirens.

Which island did Hesiod and Apollonius of Rhodes name as the sirens' home?

Anthemoessa, 'the flowery one', is the sirens' island in Hesiod's Catalogue of Women and in Apollonius's Argonautica; later writers placed the sirens off the Campanian coast near Capri.

Terra Sirenum, Latin for 'land of the sirens', is a cratered upland on which world?

Mars keeps the sirens' name on its southern highlands: Terra Sirenum is scarred by huge craters such as Newton, yet one low basin there is thought to have once held a lake.

Greek artists may have modelled the siren on the ba, a human-headed bird of which ancient religion?

Egyptian belief pictured the ba, a person's soul, as a human-headed bird that left the body at death; the male sirens of this eastern type had vanished from Greek art by the fifth century BC.

Which early medieval work, written around 700, describes sirens as sea-girls with scaly fishes' tails?

The Liber Monstrorum, an Anglo-Latin catalogue of marvels, gives sirens a maiden's body and scaly fishes' tails, more than a thousand years after Greek artists first drew them as birds.

Medieval bestiaries gave the siren which two accessories, now emblematic of mermaids across Europe?

A comb and a mirror marked the siren as a vain creature in the bestiaries; the pair then passed to the mermaid, who still holds them in art and folklore.

Isidore of Seville, in his Etymologiae, rationalised the sirens as what?

Isidore wrote that sirens were really prostitutes who ruined travellers, leading them into poverty; their wings and claws were invented, he said, because Love both flies and wounds.

In Isaiah 13:22, Jerome used the Latin for sirens to translate a Hebrew word meaning what?

Jerome's Vulgate renders the Hebrew tannim, jackals, as 'sirenae' in Isaiah 13:22, picturing them howling among the ruined palaces of Babylon.

In which of Dante's works does he dream of a siren who claims to have diverted Ulysses?

In Purgatorio XIX Dante dreams of a stammering woman who becomes a 'sweet siren' and boasts of turning Ulysses from his course, a boast Homer's account never supports.

Which Renaissance figure wrote that the siren sings mariners to sleep, then climbs aboard and kills them?

Leonardo da Vinci's notebook bestiary files the siren under flatterers: she sings so sweetly that the mariners fall asleep, then climbs onto the ship and kills them.

Which 17th-century Jesuit scholar argued Noah must have built compartments for sirens on the Ark?

Athanasius Kircher, in his 1675 Arca Noë, reasoned that since sirens were real creatures, Noah must have built compartments to house them aboard the Ark.

In Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia, which legendary founder of Britain nearly capsizes at the Pillars of Hercules?

Brutus of Troy, great-grandson of Aeneas, meets the sirens beyond the Pillars of Hercules in Geoffrey's Historia; his ships barely escape into the Tyrrhenian Sea, where he finds Corineus.

Which Roman author dismissed sirens as fable while noting a claim that they lived in India?

Pliny the Elder gave sirens no credit in his Natural History, yet passed on Dinon's report that in India they charm men with song, lull them to sleep and tear them to pieces.

Which Rhine rock is home to a siren of German legend whose song lures boatmen to their deaths?

The Lorelei, a steep slate cliff in the Rhine Gorge, gained its enchantress only in 1801, in a ballad by Clemens Brentano; Heinrich Heine's 1824 poem made her famous.

Which of these siren-titled works is a short story by Franz Kafka?

Kafka's parable The Silence of the Sirens, unpublished until 1931, holds that the sirens had a weapon deadlier than their song, their silence, and that Ulysses sailed past without noticing it.

What is a freely made decision designed to bind your future self, like an advance directive, called?

A Ulysses pact, named for Odysseus's precaution against the sirens, lets a choice made freely now overrule your later self; psychiatric advance directives, written while well, are one kind.

How did William Etty's huge 1837 painting The Sirens and Ulysses depict the sirens?

Etty showed the sirens as naked young women among corpses, the remains of earlier victims; the 1837 canvas, painted with an experimental technique, decayed fast and was restored in 2003-2010.

Which poet's ballad inspired Frederic Leighton's painting The Fisherman and the Syren?

Frederic Leighton's The Fisherman and the Syren (c. 1856-58) illustrates Goethe's ballad Der Fischer, in which a water-maiden sings a fisherman down into the river.

Which city's public gallery bought Waterhouse's Ulysses and the Sirens in 1891?

Hubert von Herkomer, acting for the National Gallery of Victoria, bought the painting for Melbourne in 1891, the year Waterhouse exhibited it at the Royal Academy.

Herbert James Draper's 1909 Ulysses and the Sirens hangs in which English city?

Hull's Ferens Art Gallery bought Draper's Ulysses and the Sirens from the artist for £600 in 1910; he also painted a smaller replica, which hangs in Leeds.

Which animals make up Sirenia, the mammal order named after the sirens?

Sirenia comprises the manatees and dugongs, four living species of slow-moving sea cow whose surfacing forms are often blamed for sailors' mermaid sightings.

Which Scottish natural philosopher invented the siren before 1799 to power organ pipes?

John Robison, Edinburgh's professor of natural philosophy, built the first siren before 1799: a rotating valve interrupted a stream of air fast enough to sound a note, and some of his sirens powered organ pipes.

Which coffee chain's logo shows a twin-tailed siren?

Starbucks' green logo is a crowned twin-tailed siren; the original brown 1971 version showed her bare-breasted with both fish tails fully visible.

What extra force does Debussy's Sirènes, the third of his Nocturnes, call for?

Sirènes adds a female choir, wordless sopranos and mezzos, to the orchestra; the movement was held back from the December 1900 premiere and first heard in October 1901.

In O Brother, Where Art Thou?, what does Delmar believe the three singing washerwomen did to Pete?

Delmar finds a toad in Pete's clothes and is sure the sirens turned him into a toad; their song was dubbed by Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch.

Freeform's Siren (2018-2020) follows Ryn, a siren who arrives in which fictional coastal town?

Bristol Cove, a Washington fishing town that trades on mermaid legend, is where Ryn comes ashore searching for her captured sister Donna.

Netflix's 2025 miniseries Sirens began life as Elemeno Pea, which Molly Smith Metzler wrote as what?

A stage play: Elemeno Pea premiered at Louisville's Humana Festival in 2011, and Metzler herself reworked it into five episodes that unfold over one weekend at a beach estate.

In Homer, the sirens tempt Odysseus by claiming to know everything that happened where?

At Troy, the sirens sing, they know every sorrow the Greeks and Trojans endured, and all that happens on earth besides; their bait for the war's veteran is knowledge, not love.

One proposed etymology links the name "siren" to Greek words meaning what?

One proposed etymology derives 'siren' from Greek seirá, 'rope', and eírō, 'to bind', hence rope or binder, an entangler; the origin is disputed, and dictionaries stop at the Greek name.

Which 10th-century Byzantine dictionary called sirens sparrows from the chest up and women below?

The Suda, a Byzantine lexicon of some 30,000 entries, also explains the sirens away: their song was really water rushing melodiously through narrow straits, which drew crews in to their deaths.

In Euripides' Helen, the sirens are winged daughters of which primordial figure?

Helen calls on the sirens as winged maidens, daughters of the Earth (Chthon), and begs them to come with flutes and pipes and mourn alongside her.

Which musical instruments were sirens most often shown playing in Greek art?

Greek vase-painters most often gave sirens the lyre, kithara and aulos; Isidore of Seville later wrote that one siren sang, one played the flute and one the lyre.

In the Book of Enoch, which women are fated to become sirens?

Those led astray by the fallen angels: Uriel shows Enoch where the angels who took wives are held until judgement, and adds that their women 'shall become sirens'.

After the sirens, which danger did Odysseus's ship face next?

Right after the sirens came Scylla and Charybdis: Odysseus steered past Scylla, who snatched six of his men, and the whirlpool Charybdis before landing on Thrinacia, island of the Sun's cattle.

In Second World War Britain, what did a single steady tone from civil defence sirens signify?

The all clear was one steady note; the warning that a raid was coming came from the very same sirens, as a rising-and-falling wail.

Engineers of which company invented the first electronic siren mimicking a mechanical one, in 1965?

Motorola engineers Ronald H. Chapman and Charles W. Stephens built the first electronic siren that mimicked a mechanical one in 1965; emergency vehicles moved to electronic wails in the 1980s.

Who named the siren in 1819, after noticing his device could produce sound under water?

Charles Cagniard de la Tour named his perforated-disc device the 'sirène' in 1819; he built it to count the vibrations in a note, and its sounding under water is why he chose the name.

Two-tone sirens are often built to sound which musical interval, considered a 'sad' sound?

A minor third: the two rotors' port counts stand in a 6:5 ratio, the frequency ratio of that interval, giving the wail its mournful quality.

In Hyginus' Fabulae, why did Demeter curse the sirens?

Hyginus says Ceres, the Roman Demeter, made the sirens winged for failing to stop her daughter's abduction; in Ovid the same wings are a gift the sirens prayed for.

Which Roman poet holds up Ulysses resisting the sirens' voices as a model?

Horace's Epistles 1.2 offers Ulysses as a useful model of what virtue and wisdom can do: had he drunk the witch's cup as his crew did, he would have lived as an unclean dog or a sow.

In the preaching of Clement of Alexandria, the siren was the symbolic vice of what?

Clement of Alexandria preached the siren as the symbol of pleasure, a song to be sailed past; Ambrose two centuries later likewise made her an allegory of worldly temptation.

A fragment of Sophocles makes which sea god the father of the sirens?

Phorcys is better known as the father of the Gorgons, which would make the sirens their sisters in this version.

In which video game series are the heroines Lilith and Maya 'Sirens' with rare alien powers?

Borderlands let players pick Lilith, a Siren with powerful alien abilities, alongside a soldier, a hunter and a berserker; Maya, another Siren, joined the cast in Borderlands 2.

Scholar Jane Ellen Harrison compared the all-knowing sirens to which other monster?

Harrison likened the all-knowing sirens to the Sphinx, another winged, woman-faced bringer of death; their song, she noted, takes effect at midday, in a windless calm.

Kurt Vonnegut's novel The Sirens of Titan takes its title from a moon of which planet?

Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is one stop for Malachi Constant in the 1959 novel, which ends by revealing that aliens steered all of human history for one of their own, stranded there.

Which French composer wrote 'Les sirènes' for mezzo-soprano, choir and piano in 1911?

Lili Boulanger won the Prix de Rome for composition two years later, the first woman to do so, spurred on by her sister Nadia's attempts and their father's win in 1835.

Where did classical Greeks often set up statues of sirens?

On tombs: the death-dealing singers softened into mourners for the dead, and a siren buried at Canosa in southern Italy seems meant to guide a soul on its journey to the afterlife.

In the Physiologus, the siren shares a chapter with the onocentaur, a man crossed with which animal?

A donkey: 'onos' is Greek for ass, and the two share a chapter because the Greek Bible's Isaiah lists sirens and onocentaurs together among the ruins of Babylon.

In Plato's Myth of Er, sirens attend which object representing the cosmos?

On the Spindle of Necessity, the whorls of the cosmos turn on the knees of Necessity while a siren sings one note on each rim; the Fates help them revolve.

The 'Sirens' episode of Joyce's Ulysses unfolds at which Dublin hotel?

The Ormond Hotel on Ormond Quay: Bloom dines there while Blazes Boylan sets off for his rendezvous with Molly, and two seductive barmaids stand in for the sirens.

Which Canadian author's 1974 collection You Are Happy includes the poem 'Siren Song'?

Margaret Atwood lets the siren speak for herself in Songs of the Transformed, a sequence in which a pig, a rat, a crow and even a corpse get songs of their own.

Which rock guitarist bought the film rights to Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan?

Jerry Garcia, the Grateful Dead's guitarist, owned the film rights for years and drafted a screenplay with Saturday Night Live writer Tom Davis; no film was produced before his death in 1995.

The 1994 film Sirens, with Hugh Grant, is based on the life of which Australian artist?

Norman Lindsay's bohemian household in the Blue Mountains is the subject; most of the film was shot at his real home and studio in Faulconbridge, New South Wales.

Denis Leary's 2014 USA Network comedy Sirens follows EMTs in which city?

The US Sirens followed Chicago EMTs Johnny, Hank and Brian; a remake of the 2011 British series, it was cancelled after two seasons in 2015.

Channel 4's 2011 paramedic comedy-drama Sirens was based on which memoir?

Blood, Sweat & Tea was compiled from ambulance technician Brian Kellett's online posts about life on an ambulance crew, written as Tom Reynolds; on screen, Richard Madden played paramedic Ashley.

Who plays Michaela 'Kiki' Kell, the billionaire's wife, in Netflix's 2025 Sirens?

Julianne Moore plays Michaela 'Kiki' Kell, a former lawyer whose hold over her young assistant Simone so worries Simone's sister Devon that she turns up to attempt an intervention.

Who played Ryn Fisher, the title creature of Freeform's Siren?

Eline Powell, a Belgian actress, played Ryn in all three seasons: a siren who comes ashore to find her abducted sister, opposite Alex Roe and Fola Evans-Akingbola as marine biologists.

The 2003 PlayStation 2 horror game Siren was directed by the creator of which series?

Keiichiro Toyama, who directed the first Silent Hill at Konami, made Siren at Sony's Japan Studio, setting it in the village of Hanuda with its 'sightjack' mechanic.

The zombie-like 'shibito' of the Siren video games have a name that literally means what?

Shibito is written with the kanji for corpse and person, literally 'corpse people'; Europe knew the game as Forbidden Siren, and the 2008 remake was Siren: Blood Curse.

Which model poses on the rocks of Anglesey on the cover of Roxy Music's 1975 album Siren?

Jerry Hall posed as a siren on the rocks near South Stack, Anglesey, a spot Bryan Ferry picked after seeing it in a TV documentary; the two became a couple soon afterwards.

Pearl Jam's 2013 single 'Sirens' was inspired by a concert on whose tour?

Mike McCready wrote the music after a show on Roger Waters's The Wall tour and wanted a Pink Floyd feel; Eddie Vedder's lyrics turned to mortality.

Which composer scored two sirens in his percussion piece Ionisation?

Edgard Varèse wrote Ionisation for thirteen percussionists, a high siren and a low one among their instruments; at the first recording session he took charge of the sirens himself.

When tested, electronic sirens often play which familiar tune instead of a wail?

Many electronic sirens run a 'Westminster chimes' test, the clock-tower melody, so a quiet check does not alarm anyone; mechanical sirens instead 'growl' briefly at low speed.

Avraamov's 1922 Symphony of Sirens, scored for a Caspian fleet's foghorns, was performed in which port?

Baku heard it on 7 November 1922, the revolution's fifth anniversary: Avraamov conducted with signal flags, and factory sirens, artillery and hydroplanes all took part.

The Chrysler Air Raid Siren, the world's loudest, was powered by what?

A Hemi V8 engine from Chrysler drove its compressor, producing 138 decibels at 100 feet; Chrysler built the sirens in the 1950s for Cold War civil defence.

As of 2025, the Netherlands tests its warning sirens at noon on which day each month?

The first Monday of each month at noon, sirens across the Netherlands wail for one minute and 26 seconds, a test kept up so that everyone still knows the sound.

Besides Holocaust memorial day, when do Israel's sirens halt the nation for a minute?

The Day of Remembrance for fallen soldiers, Yom HaZikaron, opens with a one-minute siren at 8 pm; Israelis stop everything, even driving on highways, and stand still.

Which wartime leader devised the one-piece 'siren suit' as leisurewear in the 1930s?

Winston Churchill devised the one-piece as a leisure suit; the war gave it its name, as something to pull on in seconds on the way to an air-raid shelter, and Turnbull & Asser made him one in bottle-green velvet.

Sirens, the eel-like salamanders of family Sirenidae, lack which body parts entirely?

Sirens have no hind limbs at all, only small forelimbs on an eel-like body; when a pond dries up they burrow into the mud and wait out the drought inside a cocoon of mucus.

Siren salamanders are the only salamanders ever observed doing what?

Sirens are the only salamanders recorded eating plants, grazing filamentous algae and other vegetation, though worms, snails and crustaceans make up most of their diet.

The reticulated siren, a salamander described in 2018, goes by what nickname?

Locals in Alabama and Florida had long spoken of a mysterious 'leopard eel' before scientists could prove it existed; the two-foot spotted salamander was described as a new species only in 2018.

Steller's sea cow, a giant sirenian, was hunted to extinction in which sea?

Around the Bering Sea's Commander Islands, Europeans first met Steller's sea cow in 1741 and, finding it slow and easy to catch, hunted it out for meat, fat and hide within 27 years.

Which town near Naples had a temple of the sirens on its peninsula in antiquity?

Sorrento, Roman Surrentum, had a temple of the sirens on its headland, which neighbours honoured with offerings; Strabo adds that some called the headland the Cape of the Sirenussae.

The siren Leucosia's name comes from the Greek word for which colour?

Leucosia is built on leukos, Greek for 'white', the root of leukocyte; Punta Licosa south of Salerno preserves her name, and Nicosia's Greek name Lefkosia shares the element.

The Syrena, a two-stroke car nicknamed 'little siren', was built from 1957 to 1983 where?

Poland's FSO built the Syrena in Warsaw and FSM later in Bielsko-Biała; the name honours the Syrenka, the mermaid on Warsaw's coat of arms, said to protect the city and the Vistula.

The 'Siren Order' mobile app, named for a coffee chain's logo, debuted in 2014 where?

South Korea got Siren Order in May 2014: customers there became the first anywhere to order from the chain by phone, through its local app.

The anonymous 'Siren Painter' is named for a stamnos of Odysseus held in which city?

London's British Museum holds the Siren Vase, an Attic red-figure stamnos of about 480-470 BC showing Odysseus's ship passing the sirens, from which the painter takes his name.

Which North African country's Bardo Museum displays a Roman mosaic of Ulysses passing the sirens?

Tunisia's Bardo Museum in Tunis holds the mosaic, lifted from a house in the Roman city of Dougga; its three sirens still stand on birds' legs, the old Greek form.

Who released the first recording of Tim Buckley's 'Song to the Siren', in 1969?

Pat Boone cut the first released version for his 1969 album Departure, a year before Buckley's own on Starsailor; This Mortal Coil's 1983 cover with Elizabeth Fraser spent 101 weeks on the UK indie chart.

Siren Head, the 40-foot monster with megaphones for a head, was created by which artist?

Canadian artist Trevor Henderson created Siren Head in 2018 as one of his photo-manipulated internet cryptids; it became a viral fixture of fan games and videos.