Psyche is from the Greek psūkhḗ (ψυχή — soul, breath, life). A modern American baby name in the broader Greek heritage aesthetic. Psyche in Greek-Roman mythology is the personification of the soul + the mortal beauty who became immortal goddess + wife of Cupid (Eros). Central to The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) by Lucius Apuleius (c. 124-170 CE) — the source of the iconic Cupid and Psyche myth. The narrative's tasks set by Venus and the soul's journey toward enlightenment became allegorical in Neoplatonist, Christian, and Renaissance traditions. Root of the English psychology and psychiatry — central to Freud's psychoanalytic theory and Jung's analytical psychology. *Antonio Canova's Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss (1787-1793) at the Louvre is a Neoclassical masterpiece. Asteroid 16 Psyche* is currently being explored by the NASA Psyche Mission (launched 2023).
Featured throughout Greek heritage and Western philosophy.
Psyche does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.
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In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Psyche reduce to 4, The Builder. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.