Circe is a woman in old Greek stories, not a word for a kind of person in real life. In the Odyssey she lives on an island, knows magic, and turns Odysseus’s friends into pigs. Odysseus himself is warned, and with help he is not changed; he stays with her for a time and then sails on. People say her name when they want a picture of a dangerously charming witch — someone who can hold you, change you, and make you forget the way home. That use is literary and a bit old-fashioned; in everyday talk you will hardly hear it. In English her name is usually said SUR-see, which surprises students who met the Greek form first. She is not the same as the Sirens (the singers who lure sailors), though both turn up in the same long sea story, and people do mix them up.