The ruling Titan after castrating his father Uranus. Husband to Rhea and father of Zeus and the other original Olympians.

Ate all of his children until Zeus to insure that no one would overthrow him.

After being overthrown he escaped to Italy and ruled as Saturn.

Father of:

Zeus
Poseidon
Hades
Hestia
Hera
Demeter
and all the poor unfortunates at the bottom of his belly.

Eep. In the process of removing angsty/trollish nodework. Bear with me, folks. This might take a while...

Take note of the name: Cronus.

Now, please compare two words, Khronos and Khronys.

They don't look very much alike, do they? But these two words (and the difference between them) are responsible for a fairly long-lasting social meme, Father Time. Yes, that's right, folks, that staple of New Year's Eve parties, that crazy old man with the beard, the scythe, and the hourglass, is a figment of our collective imagination brought about by someone who was probably drinking a little too much retsina as he flipped through his copy of Aeschylus.

What's this, you say? (Well, probably not, but bear with me....)

Khronos, for those of us fortunate enough to have avoided taking multiple years of Ancient Greek, is the word for time; chronometer and chronology both come from it.
Khronys, on the other hand, is a direct transliteration into English of the name of the world's creator, according to the Ancient Greeks. Cronus is the Latinized (bastardized) version that most people are familiar with.

The haple^h^h^h^h^h translator took bits and pieces of the legends attached to both mythological concepts-- the scythe Khronys used to cut off his father's genitalia, and the hourglass, a fairly universal symbol of the passage of time-- and melded them together into a slightly confused whole. And voila! A new tradition is created through improper spelling.

I'll be quiet now...

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