Etymology The name
Fauna is a feminine form of Latin
Faunus, the deity of the countryside.
Faunus itself is generally thought to stem from
Proto-Italic *fawe or
*fawono, ultimately from
Proto-Indo-European *bʰh₂u-n ('favourable'). Consequently,
Georges Dumézil translated her name as "the Favourable." In his conceptual approach to Roman deity, Michael Lipka sees Faunus and Fauna as an example of a characteristically Roman tendency to form gender-complementary pairs within a sphere of functionality. The male-female figures never have equal prominence, and one partner (not always the female) seems to have been modelled on the other. An
Oscan dedication naming
Fatuveís (=
Fatui,
genitive singular), found at
Aeclanum in
Irpinia, indicates that the concept is
Italic. Fauna has also been dismissed as merely "an artificial construction of scholarly
casuistics."
Ancient interpretations Varro explained the role of Faunus and Fauna as prophetic deities:
Fauni are gods of the
Latins, so that there is both a male
Faunus and a female
Fauna; there is a tradition that they used to speak of (
fari) future events in wooded places using the
verses they call 'Saturnians', and thus they were called '' 'Fauni' '' from 'speaking' (
fando).
Servius identifies Faunus with Fatuclus, and says his wife is Fatua or Fauna, deriving the names as Varro did from
fari, "to speak," "because they can foretell the future." The early Christian author
Lactantius called her
Fenta Fauna and said that she was both the sister and wife of Faunus; according to Lactantius, Fatua sang the
fata, "fates," to women as Faunus did to men.
Justin said that Fatua, the wife of Faunus, "being filled with divine spirit assiduously predicted future events as if in a madness
(furor)," and thus the verb for divinely inspired speech is
fatuari. While several etymologists in antiquity derived the names
Fauna and
Faunus from
fari, "to speak,"
Macrobius regarded Fauna's name as deriving from
faveo, favere, "to favor, nurture," "because she nurtures all that is useful to living creatures." According to Macrobius, the Books of the
Pontiffs (pontificum libri) treated
Bona Dea, Fauna,
Ops, and Fatua as names for the same goddess,
Maia. ==See also==