Meaning & Origin
The Latin equivalent of Odysseus.
Ulysses is a boy's and girl's baby name of Greek origin (via Latin), the Latinized form of Odysseus, whose name may derive from Greek odussomai (to be angry at, to hate), though the meaning is debated — most famously associated with 'the one who travels far and suffers.'
Odysseus/Ulysses is the archetypal hero of journeys — ten years of wandering after the Trojan War, outwitting Cyclopes and sirens and the wrath of Poseidon to reach home. President Ulysses S. Grant, James Joyce's landmark modernist novel Ulysses, and Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem of the restless old hero give this name extraordinary literary and historical depth.