Greek myth name of the most beautiful mortal woman ever to exist whose abduction by Paris caused the Trojan war. The name has been disputed for a long time. There have been attempts to link it with Greek helene "torch" or selene "moon." However, recently it has been compared by scholars to Vedic Saranyu, wife of Surya, who was abducted just as Helen of Greek mythology was; the name may therefore be from the Proto-Indo-European root sel "to elope" and have been borrowed from the older Hindu myth of the abduction of the goddess of dawn.