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A mermaid is a legendary aquatic creature with the head and torso of human female and the tail of, in most schools of thought, a fish, although their horizontal fin structure would be more indicative of an aquatic mammal. Various cultures throughout the world have similar figures. The names comes from the Middle English mere in the obsolete sense 'sea' (as in maritime, and the the Latin mare, "sea") + maid(en).

Much like sirens, mermaids would sometimes sing to sailors and enchant them, distracting them from their work and causing them to walk off the deck or cause shipwrecks. Other stories would have them squeeze the life out of drowning men while trying to rescue them. They are also said to take them down to their underwater kingdoms. In Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid it is said that they forget that humans cannot breathe underwater, while others say they drown men out of spite.

The sirens of Greek mythology are sometimes portrayed in later folklore as mermaid-like; in fact, some languages (such as the Maltese word 'sirena') use the same word for both bird and fish creatures. Other related types of mythical or legendary creature are water fairies (e.g. various water nymphs) and selkies, animals that can transform themselves from seals to humans.