A mermaid (from the Middle English mere in the obsolete sense 'sea' + maid(en)) is a legendary aquatic creature with the head and torso of human female and the tail of a fish.
Tales of mermaids are nearly universal. The first known mermaid stories appeared in Assyria, ca. 1000 BCE.
It has been widely suggested that manatees or dugongs could be behind the myth of the mermaid. These large aquatic mammals are notable for the way in which they carry their young, cradled in their arms much as a human would carry a baby. It is possible that sailors seeing these unfamiliar beasts for the first time, would assume that they had in fact stumbled across some sort of humanoid species, and consequently spread their accounts of the sightings through their homelands on their return from voyages. It has even been posited that the traditional image of a mermaid with long flowing hair could be attributed to manatees breaking the ocean surface underneath patches of seaweed, and giving the unfamiliar observer the impression of having long hair.
Information source: Wikipedia
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