The name of the white-armed, ox-eyed queen of heaven, Ἡρα or Ἡρη (Hera or Heré), is derived by philologists from the same root as the familiar German herr and herrinn, and thus signifies the lady or mistress.  Indeed the masculine form ἥρως, whence we take our hero, originally meant a free or noble man, just as herr does in ancient German, and came gradually to mean a person distinguished on any account, principally in arms; and thence it became technically applied to the noble ancestors who occupied an intermediate place between the gods and existing men.  The Latin herus and hera are cognate, and never rose out of their plain original sense of master and mistress, though the heros was imported in his grander sense from the Greek, and has passed on to us. 
    It is curious that whereas the wife of Zeus was simply the lady, it was exactly the same with Frigga, who, as we shall by-and-by-see, was merely the Frau—the free woman or lady. 
    Hera herself does not seem to have had many persons directly named after her, though there was plenty from the root of her name.  The feminine Hero was probably thus derived,—belonging first to one of the Danaides, then to a daughter of Priam, then to the maiden whose light led Leander to his perilous breasting of the Hellespont, and from whom Shakespeare probably took it for the lady apparently "done to death by slanderous tongues." (History of Christian Names, Yonge, 1884).