Nesoi

Nesoi is simply the Greek word for islands. As a group of divine beings it points to the Oceanids, the daughters of Oceanus and Tethys. Hesiod says there are three thousand of them, and his catalogue in the Theogony names dozens, several with the names of lands and places, such as Asia and Europa.

Individual island nymphs are better attested than the group. Callimachus's Hymn to Delos has Asteria leap into the sea to escape Zeus and become the floating island of Delos, where Leto later gives birth to Apollo and Artemis. In Pindar's Seventh Olympian Ode, the sun god Helios takes the nymph Rhodos as his bride, and the island of Rhodes is named for her.

No ancient text sets out a fixed list of Nesoi, so this page gathers the pattern rather than a roll-call. The idea behind it is that an island, like a river or a mountain, has a divine presence of its own.