Tolkien and Barfield - especially the latter, if I got him right (but didn't read him myself, so far) - seem to have considered language as involved.
Once one sees grass is green as well as grass, once you see the difference between grey and yellow, cold and hot, you can imagine grey lead turned into yellow gold or the cold reptile as breathing hot fire. Each language has some unique aesthetical twinge on each word and explicitating that in a story has a mythical quality in that community because it reflects the genius of the language so well ... and so on.
Well, one must grant that the aesthetic appeal for us of Homeric Greek is tied to Iliad, Odyssey and Theogony and later even Argonautica - but also to Works and Days. And one must also grant the aesthetic appeal of these stories has something to do with the language. But this doesn't mean that all the myths of Hera came from reflection of "cow-eyed" or that all the legend of Ulysses came from either "wily" or "many-things-bearing" (polytlas).
The fad probably started with Max Müller - to whom mythology was a sickness of language, to which Tolkien replied language, especially modern languages, could as well be seen as a sickness of mythology. But there is only so much a language will do to form a myth. Let "sun" and "moon" be masculine and feminine, and if there is a sun-goddess and moon-god in that mythology, I'll be surprised. In other languages "sun" is feminine and "moon" masculine, and this is the case with Nordic languages, where Norse myth has sun as a woman and moon as a man. But - not as gods. In Finnish, neither sun or moon have gender per se, as the grammatical gender is absent from Fenno-Ugrian, but both sun and moon have goddesses, the moon goddess named Kuu, which means moon, also Kuutar, "lady moon" and Päivätär is "lady daylight". But moon is also related to "Kave, ancient god of sky, later the deity of the lunar cycle. Father of Väinämöinen. Also Kaleva." Basically, in fact many of them, sylphs. Literally, they are called "narrows" as in narrowing the face of the Moon.
In the case of Finnish, I don't think personification (if only a figure of speach) can be blamed on grammatical gender, as Müller would have had it. There isn't any in Finnish.
Now, they went even further, not only is Helios a sun myth, but so is Hercules. Chesterton joked about it, someone having considered St. Francis of Assisi a sun myth.
I actually think it is better to divide not just Paganism, but also Pagan myth into the categories : God, gossip of the gods, demons, philosophers. And of distinguishing "myth" proper from "heroic legend" or "mythological history". The source of the latter would be mainly historic, even if it included false gods. My view of Krishna is like some Atheist views of Jesus. He probably really was a friend of the Pandavas, enemy of the Kauravas. But he was no god. The story as told, or most details in it, don't demand his being so. The bigger difficulties in Hercules is not whether he was son of Zeus - he wasn't - or how one came to think that - probably his contemporaries, even he were deluded by demons or over impressed by his strength - but more like what were the Centaurs?
I disagree with Carl Wieland's answer restricting their observation to Greek mythology in his feedback answer from 10 February 2013. As his more learned questioner knew, they were known in Egypt too* (biography of St Anthony the Great, episode when he goes to visit St Paul the First Hermit, shown the way by a Centaur), I also disagree with what I presume his attitude to Greek mythology to be. That centaurs in general came from Ixion impregnating Nephele or Cheiron from "the god Saturn's" paramours is as it stands impossible, but we also would need to account for the stories of Hercules and Jason - as biographies, not as fantasy novels.
But apart from the cases of such a hero or such a "monster" being known from history, from stories, as observed reality, we need to ask what the conception of the gods came from. These usually not observed. Krishna may have been observed, but Vishnu who he is supposed to be an avatar of wasn't. Ulysses was observed, but Athena as such, not by others than he. He may have been detained by an observed Calypso, but the detainment ended after a non-observed conference on Olympus.
Now, these non-historic or not-strictly historic details, the "theological" interpretation of the events, and version of pre-human events, this is what is most aptly called "myths" when distinguished from history, since unlike Ulysses' homecoming the non-observation by human observers (or by many independent ones) is fairly clear.
Part of it comes from memories of the God their forefathers actually knew - one who withdrew from them more and more, concentrating on Hebrews after Babel. In Job He intervenes among non-Israelites, but to Greeks and Hindoos, He would have been distant. In some way this is reflected by Babylonian Anu or Greek Uranus. But they were wrong to conclude God had withdrawn, and sometimes still wronger in guessing why He had done so.
Part of it comes from "gossip of the gods" ... while Sun and Moon seem fairly clearly to be moved by intelligent movers, considering them as "brother and sister" is kind of pushing it, as is also considering them as "wood and wooer". It's the impulse of "tell me more, tell me more ..." at work.
Part of it comes from philosophy - attributing intelligent movers directly to all celestial bodies or to Sun and Moon and five more "planets" and to "Heaven in general" (with fix stars glued to it) is simply a good way of dealing with why. One which to me has not needed debunking because of Newtonian physics. Here is probably where Max Müller, so used to considering sun and moon as dead objects moved only by non-living physical powers, came up with the idea of mythology as a reflection of language, specifically gendered nouns for sun and moon.
And part of it comes from the demons. If Hercules had some visions of Zeus acknowledging him as son, those visions were demonic. If Hesiod did not make up the backstory to simply give "supernatural allure" to his version of origin myths, he saw nine muses, and these could be either witches, voicing the promptings of demons, or demonic apparitions. Though I have also thought some nature spirits could have cooked these stories together to mock the gods of the myths, and given them to Hesiod and then before God's judgement saying "we never thought they would actually fall for that, sorry!" - but considering they also sang hymns to "Kronos of the crooked thoughts" - probably Satan - this is less likely.
In other words, for non-historical myths, exeunt Tolkien and Barfield**, enter Chesterton. For more or less history-like "mythological history" or "heroic legend", again, Chesterton : real facts, plus probably some fan-fiction added (how he dealt with Trojan War in Everlasting Man or with King Arthur elsewhere).
Hans Georg Lundahl
Marguerite Audoux Library, Paris
Dedication of St. Peter in Chains***
1.VIII.2019
* And in India, where they are a class of "spirits:"
In Hinduism, the Gandharvas (Sanskrit and Hindi: गन्धर्व; Assamese: গন্ধৰ্ব্ব, gandharbba; Bengali: গন্ধর্ব, "gandharba", Kannada: ಗಂಧರ್ವ; Telugu: గంధర్వ) are male nature spirits, husbands of the Apsaras. Some are part animal, usually a bird or horse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandharva
** On the parts of philosophy, gossip of the gods and for that matter fan fiction on heroic legend, narration of language specific word connotations may have some small impact, but I don't think this is the main source of myths.
*** Romae, in Exquiliis, Dedicatio sancti Petri Apostoli ad Vincula. Antiochiae passio sanctorum septem fratrum Machabaeorum Martyrum, qui, cum matre sua, passi sunt sub Antiocho Epiphane Rege. Eorum reliquiae, Romam translatae, in eadem Ecclesia sancti Petri ad Vincula condita; fuerunt.
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