Corinthian (comics) - Name

Name

The origin of the Corinthian's name is unclear. In a later story arc of Sandman, The Kindly Ones, Puck politely refuses to ask whether his name is taken from "the letters, the pillars, the leather, the place, or the mode of behavior."

• "The letters" is most likely a reference to the Letter to the Corinthians, or First Epistle to the Corinthians, which uses the phrase "dark mirror," also used by Dream to describe him.
• "The pillars" is a reference to the Corinthian style of pillars.
• "The leather" is possibly referring to Corinthian leather.
• "The place" is probably referring to Corinth, Greece.
• "The mode of behavior" (Corinthian behavior) is indulging in luxury and licentiousness.

In the Death In Venice miniseries, a beggar (who is not entirely reliable) claims that he exchanged one of his eyes for one offered to him by the Corinthian, and that he called him by the first thing he saw when he opened his new eye--a Corinthian pillar. Later in Death in Venice, the Corinthian refers to himself as "the dream rot."

According to an interview with Gaiman in The Sandman Companion, the Corinthian takes his name from the mode of behavior; specifically, "a Corinthian" was another term for a rake: a devil-may-care, ne'er-do-well.