Ovid was a Roman poet who lived from 43 BC to 17 AD. His Latin name was Publius Ovidius Naso. He is most famous for the Metamorphoses, a long set of poems that retell old Greek and Roman stories in which people and gods change shape — into trees, birds, rivers, stars. He also wrote love poems; the emperor Augustus sent him away from Rome, and he never came home. Students meet his name in literature class, in paintings of those old stories, and as a shorthand for “the Roman who told the myth.” It is a person’s name, not a common English word you would put in a sentence about daily life.