A Greek heroic name meaning 'strength,' and an epithet associated with Heracles.
Alcides is the birth name of the greatest hero in Greek mythology. Before the hero we know as Heracles was renamed — a name meaning "glory of Hera," given in propitiation to the goddess who tormented him — he was called Alcides, derived from the Greek "alke," meaning strength or might, combined with the patronymic suffix honoring his grandfather Alcaeus. Alcides is therefore the name of Heracles before his legendary labors, before his deification, before his apotheosis: it is the name of a man who was simply, magnificently strong.
The name passed into the Roman world alongside the Heracles myth and persisted through Renaissance humanist culture, which delighted in classical names as markers of learning and aspiration. In the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America, Alcides found enduring popularity as a given masculine name, particularly in Portugal, Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, where classical education left deep marks on naming conventions through the 19th and early 20th centuries. Literary and political figures bearing the name reinforced its currency.
Today Alcides is rare in the English-speaking world but retains steady use across South America, where it carries a quietly aristocratic, classically educated air. It is a name that announces a certain seriousness — an awareness of history, of mythology, of the long arc connecting ancient Greece to a modern birth certificate. For a child named Alcides, the story of Heracles is always there, just beneath the surface: the reminder that even the greatest strength begins with a name.