Ulysses

American  

[yoo-lis-eez] / yuˈlɪs iz /

noun

1. Classical Mythology. Latin name for Odysseus.

2. (italics) a psychological novel (1922) by James Joyce.

3. a male given name.

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Ulysses British  

/ ˈjuːlɪˌsiːz, juːˈlɪsiːz /

noun

1. the Latin name of Odysseus

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Ulysses Cultural  

1. The Roman name of the Greek hero Odysseus.

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The Irish author James Joyce adopted the name for the title of his masterpiece of the early twentieth century, which is, in part, a retelling of the myth of Odysseus.

In the Aeneid of Virgil, which was written in Latin, Odysseus is called Ulysses.

Example Sentences

Ulysses Jenkins, the pioneering Los Angeles-born video artist whose avant-garde compositions embodied Black experimentalism, has died.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 2, 2026

In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the law creating the first national park—Yellowstone.

From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 16, 2025

The Ulysses mission, launched in 1990, was the first spacecraft to leave the ecliptic plane and sample the solar wind over the poles.

From Science Daily • Oct. 14, 2025

James Joyce’s "Ulysses" rained em dashes on winding sentences that he had already stripped of quotation marks, resulting in prose so unruly that numerous reading groups are devoted specifically to parsing it.

From Salon • Jun. 11, 2025

Kyle stayed on his direct trajectory to Flora and Ulysses, but within seconds, his hover ladder’s infrared collision sensors picked up the approach of Marjory’s platform.

From "Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics" by Chris Grabenstein