Character
Polyphemus
Cyclops · shepherd · son of Poseidon
A one-eyed giant, a shepherd with enormous flocks, and a son of Poseidon. He shuts Odysseus and twelve of his men in his cave and eats them two at a time, until Odysseus gets him drunk, tells him his name is Noman ("Nobody"), and blinds him with a sharpened stake — so that his neighbours ignore the shouting that Noman is killing him. The escape works, but Odysseus cannot resist calling his real name back from the ship, and the Cyclops's prayer to his father is the curse that shadows the rest of the voyage.
The 'Nobody' trick only works because Greek grammar lets the name pun on the word for 'no one' — one of the very few jokes in Homer that survives translation intact.