Melusine and the Starbucks’ Siren: Art, Mermaids, and the Tangled Origins of a Coffee Chain Logo

Abstract

Melusine, the snake- or fish-tailed heroine of a medieval legend, has been labelled in modern sources as the mermaid in the Starbucks’ coffee chain logo and has become a generic name for two-tailed mermaids. However, it is unclear how the traditionally one-tailed Melusine became linked to this image. Tracing the source of the Starbucks’ logo leads to an obscure end, but similar double-tailed mermaids abound in art and heraldry. Melusine entered heraldry as the mythical ancestress of a few families, and in 19th century works on heraldry, the names mermaid, siren, and Melusine are used interchangeably for mermaids with one or two tails. This article seeks to demonstrate that Melusine’s name became specifically tied to the two-tailed mermaid only after Sabine Baring-Gould’s 1866 study of the legend, which used one such picture as an illustration. Subsequent authors began identifying this illustration as Melusine and labelling similar images accordingly. This shows how visual representation affects the transmission and public perception of myths.