MINYE, a name given to the inhabitants of Orchomenos, in Bœotia, from Minyas, king of the country. Orchomenos the son of Minyas gave his name to the capital of the country; and the inhabitants retained their original appellation, in contradistinction to the Orchomenians of Arcadia. A colony of Orchomenians passed into Thessaly and settled in Iolchos; and from this circumstance the people of the place, particularly the Argonauts, were called Minye. This name they received, according to the opinion of some, not because a number of Orchomenians had settled amongst them, but because the chief and noblest of them were descended from the daughters of Minyas. Part of the Orchomenians accompanied the sons of Codrus when the latter migrated to Ionia. The descendants of the Argonauts, as well as the Argonauts themselves, received the name of Minye. They first inhabited Lemnos, where they were born of Lemnian women, who had murdered their husbands. But being driven from Lemnos by the Pelasgi, about 1160 before the Christian era, they came to settle in Laconia, and thence passed into Calliste with a colony of Lacedæmonians.