Talk:Our Lady, Star of the Sea

Mary as "river goddess?"
Mary is not a "goddess" in any Christian tradition, Catholic or otherwise. This article's inclusion in the "river gods" category is either out of honest ignorance or out of out of biased propaganda. I have therefore removed it from this erroneous category. Catholic Orthodox (talk) 03:56, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
 * It was probably out of ignorance. It was best to remove it. --Willthacheerleader18 (talk) 03:03, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, of course she isn't given the title of "goddess", but in comparative terms (say, by an anthropologist describing Catholic folk religion) she would of course be so categorized. The aim should of course be to present a referenced academic discussion of Marian veneration without creating unnecessary confusion by using ideologically charged terms like "goddess".

It is of course very easy to cite works that list "Our Lady, Star of the Sea" as goddess, so you can invoke "ignorance" here, but of course the aim must not be to cite random publications but to give a coherent scholarly presentation of the topic. --dab (𒁳) 09:58, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Of course the titles in The blessed virgin mary make it pretty clear that she has de facto goddess status to. (Mother of God, Queen of Heaven, Mother of the Church, Mediatrix, Co-Redemptrix, Our Lady). Hard to imagine a Queen of Heaven who isnt a goddess. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.3.255.103 (talk) 11:50, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Feast Day
Is there a feast day associated with this title? Rwflammang (talk) 16:09, 13 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Probably not: http://saints.sqpn.com/bvm/ History2007 (talk) 18:02, 13 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Different places seem to celebrate it at different times. A rather attenuated Most Holy Name of Mary (Sept. 12) by which one gets Maris Stella/ Star of the Sea. AoS observes September 27. Mannanan51 (talk) 06:41, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Title of Isis
Isis talk page section.

I'm having serious doubts about this alleged attribute of Isis. See the Isis talk page, link here and above, for details on the search for a primary source. Rwflammang (talk) 16:10, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

This mention of "transformations" is kind of irrelevant...
The יָם + מָר etymology is not contingent upon these various "transformations". The Hebrew name Miryam is generally held to come directly from the Hebrew מָר mar (they do have different vowel sounds, but that doesn't mean they can't be etymologically related). So even assuming Eusebius worked from the Greek, that doesn't mean that the name itself "had to go through a series of transformations" in order that the etymology make sense. The etymology would be the same even if the Greek and Aramaic forms never existed. 98.115.103.26 (talk) 14:07, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
 * For reaching this meaning the Hebrew name Miryam (מרים) had to go through a series of transformations: in Judeo-Aramaic it became Maryām, rendered in Greek as Mariam (Μαριάμ). It was this form that was etymologized by Eusebius. He interpreted Maryām as mar-yam (מר-ים) "drop of the sea", based on מר mar, a rare biblical word for "drop" and ים yam "sea".

This needs to be presented better

 * St Jerome adopted this interpretation and translated the name into Latin as stilla maris, "drop of the sea", but at some later stage a copyist transcribed this into stella maris, "star of the sea", and this transcription error became widespread.
 * Another opinion[clarification needed] states that Jerome himself interpreted the name as meaning "star of the sea" or Stella Maris, by relating it to a Hebrew word for star, מאור (ma'or), from the verb אור ('or), to be light or shine.

The article really shouldn't be presenting the former as a fact. Both are opinions. And in my research, I've found that it's most likely the other way around: St. Jerome probably intended "stella maris" (יָם + מָאוֹר), while the "stilla maris" (יָם + מָר) is something that didn't come along until later, which scholars then attempted to attribute to St. Jerome by the fact that his "stella maris" does appear to be a variant of "stilla maris".

Now the following is my opinion, but some of it could be relevant to the article. I've found that St. Jerome himself is quoted as saying that "Mary" not only means "star of the sea", but also means "bitter sea", "illuminatrix", and "illumination". And these latter two indicate that he was familiar with the Hebrew מָאוֹר ma'or (luminary) and that he associated it with this name. So it's highly possible that St. Jerome arrived at "star of the sea" through יָם + מָאוֹר. Not to mention that other theologians have often used "Star of the Sea" and "Illuminatrix" almost synonymously as well, saying that Mary is likened to a star that illuminates us. (The north star leads you to port, but it really doesn't provide much light...)

Furthermore, St. Jerome is a doctor of the Church and what he says carries a lot of weight, especially among the medieval theologians. So it's kind of hard to believe that if St. Jerome said it means "drop of the sea", that his "drop of the sea" would be completely ignored in the Catholic tradition in favor of a what amounts to a typo. (Besides that, the earliest explicit instance of "drop of the sea" (apart from what St. Jerome may or may not have said) seems to be from Rev. Fr. Adrian van Lyere, S.J. in 1648.) 98.115.103.26 (talk) 14:20, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

The "transcription error" is speculatory
The Catholic Encyclopedia is of the opinion that it was not transcription error, but was due to a historically-attested vowel shift in the Latin language during the 3rd and 4th centuries (around the time of St. Jerome) which account for the "i" changing to "e" in certain words. So according to that opinion, it's possible that "stella maris" was simply an alternative spelling in use at the time, and that St. Jerome (or one of the early copyists) deliberately wrote it down that way (though probably not with the intention of changing its meaning to "star of the sea"). Though I personally think that both these opinions are nonsense. It was neither transcription error nor vowel shift; St. Jerome merely wrote (and intended) "stella maris" all along. 98.115.103.26 (talk) 14:23, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
 * a misnomer based on a transcription error
 * at some later stage a copyist transcribed this into stella maris, "star of the sea", and this transcription error became widespread.