When I was 9 years old, my father's work took my family to live in San Jose, Costa Rica. We rented a big, beautiful house in the hills overlooking San Jose. When we arrived at our new house, we found that a stray dog named Muñeco (Spanish for "doll") already lived there. Fortunately, he was willing to let us stay, so long as we fed him. Muñeco was the first dog my family had ever had. I was thrilled.
Soon after moving in, we decided to invite another dog into our family and one day my folks came home with an adorable Irish Setter puppy and tasked me with naming the little guy. Around the time of my family's move to Costa Rica, my mom had bought me a children's book of Greek mythology, which I devoured. Armed with this wonderful book, there was only one choice for my red-haired little puppy: Zeus. Here is Zeus as I remember him as a puppy -- all floppy ears and kinetic energy.
Zeus grew up to be a handsome, if rather thin and sickly, fellow. He was as dumb as a bag of hammers, but endlessly friendly, cheerful, and loyal. He was one of the best friends I have ever had. Here's the two of us in 1978.
Muñeco, fortunately, was a much smarter dog than Zeus. (It's hard to imagine how he couldn't be!) Sadly, Muñeco had a character flaw. He was a car chaser. One day, the gardener found him on the side of the road up the hill from our house. A passing car had taken a swipe at him.
Needless to say, we were all devastated. Muñeco was a really amazing dog and a special part of the family. We decided to get another dog after he passed. My folks settled on a female cocker spaniel puppy. There was only one choice for her name: Hera. This little cutie pie is shown below. Sadly, Hera was not with us for long. A few months after she arrived, she wondered off and got into trouble or was stolen. We never saw her again and as far as I know, we never found out what happened.
Eventually my family moved back to the States. We had to leave Zeus behind. Given his various health problems, it would have been very difficult to bring him to the States. We left him with friends who lived down the hill. As I recall, he lived for a couple more years before his health problems caught up with him.
Fast forward to 2001, and the cute little human in those pictures to the right had grown up into a vastly less cute adult. I was visiting the LNLS in Campinas, Brazil and had been thinking about a new EXAFS software project. I sat down one day, opened XEmacs, and started writing code. Needing a name for the program I was writing and being on travel in Latin America, my thoughts drifted back to my gang of four-legged, childhood friends. I decided that Athena, the goddess of wisdom, was a good source of inspiration for my new project. A couple months later, I let two of my colleagues try my new code and the name stuck. As I fleshed out the suite of software, I worked my way through the pantheon.
And that's why my codes are named after Greek goddesses.