If you learned about the Greco-Roman gods as a kid, you probably learned that Hermes is the messenger of the gods, which, if you really think about it, is more like a job title than like a domain to be god over, like love or war or thunder or making things out of metal. Is he the god of delivering things? Is he the god of going fast? Well, kind of, but not really. As Theoi.com lists, the things under Hermes' purview include travelers, roads, thievery, language, merchants, and athletes, among many others. The athletes part makes sense when you think of him as the fastest runner in the world thanks to his winged sandals, but the rest might seem like a random smattering of things.

That is, at least, until you look at Hermes' origins as a mythological figure and see what the common thread is. The name Hermes (most likely) derives from the Greek herma, which was a border marker in the shape of a rectangular pillar with a bearded head of the god on top and then a wiener down below, with no other body parts or anything. With this origin in mind, it's easy to see that the fundamental idea of Hermes is a boundary-crossing god, in which case the ideas of travel, commerce, language, and even his associations with sleep and death start to make sense.

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