Greek mythological name of the boy who flew on wax wings too close to the sun; meaning uncertain, possibly pre-Greek origin.
Few names carry as much mythological weight as Icarus, the ill-fated son of the master craftsman Daedalus in ancient Greek legend. The name's etymology is uncertain — likely pre-Greek, possibly Cretan in origin, which fits the myth's Aegean geography. In the famous story, Daedalus fashions wings of feathers and wax to escape the labyrinth of Crete; he warns his son not to fly too close to the sun or too near the sea.
Icarus, intoxicated by the freedom of flight, soars too high. The wax melts. He falls into the sea that still bears his name: the Icarian Sea, between the Greek islands of Samos and Patmos.
For two millennia, Icarus has served as the archetypal symbol of ambitious overreach — a cautionary figure about the dangers of pride and the seduction of transcendence. Yet the myth has always contained a counternarrative: Icarus chose wonder over caution, and in that choice found a brief, blazing magnificence. H.
Auden's poem "Musée des Beaux Arts" and Pieter Bruegel's painting both meditate on how the world continues indifferently while Icarus falls — a meditation on individual tragedy within collective indifference. Anne Sexton wrote her own haunting reclamation of the myth, and countless composers, novelists, and filmmakers have returned to the story. As a given name in the modern era, Icarus has moved gradually from the purely literary into the genuinely usable.
Parents choosing it tend to embrace the duality: not just the warning, but the soaring. It is a name for a child you hope will dream audaciously and reach toward impossible things — knowing, perhaps, that the reaching itself is the point.