Nyarlathotep

In ancient Egyptian, the phrase "Ny Har Lut Hotep" roughly translates to "there is no peace through the gate," or "there is no sanity at the place of judgement." A suitable translation of the crawling chaos. Many Egyptian phrases have been adapted into Arab texts; it may have been during some form of translation that the phrase was perverted into Nyarlathotep, which might have been where H.P. Lovecraft got the name for the deity.

In Brian Lumley's Titus Crow series that picks up on Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, Nyarlathotep is relegated to a mere symbolic representation of the CCD's powers of telepathy, instead of a Hermes-esque member of the Cthulhu pantheon. However, in Lumley's Dream World as visited by Titus Crow and sidekick de Marigny in later books, he becomes anthropomorphic and scary. And, to memory, very green, although this may fall under scary.

Lumley does this with his Azathoth and Shub-Niggurath also. Personally I have no real problem with the ideas of the latter two being only symbols instead of Scary Monsters, but there is a certain sentimentality one attaches to good old 'thotep... I remember when younger always having the image of Hermes in winged sandals and Nyarlathotep in winged combat boots.