Kalamos


Kalamos is a Greek mythological figure Kalamos, son of Maiandros.

Greek mythology

A story in Nonnus's Dionysiaca tells about the love of two youths, Kalamos and Karpos, the son of Zephyrus and Chloris. Karpos drowned in the Meander river while the two were competing in a swimming contest. In his grief, Kalamos allowed himself to drown also. He was then transformed into a water reed, whose rustling in the wind was interpreted as a sigh of lamentation.
Walt Whitman's "Calamus" poems in Leaves of Grass may have been inspired by this story.

Etymology of the word Kalamos

Similar words can be found in Sanskrit, Hebrew and Latin as well as the ancient Greek Κάλαμος. The Arabic word قلم qalam is likely to have been borrowed from one of these languages in antiquity. The Swahili word kalamu comes from the Arabic qalam.
From the Latin calamus come a number of modern English words: