In Greek mythology, Pygmalion’s beloved statue was named Galatea after it came to life. Pygmalion was a sculptor who created an image of an ideal woman and fell in love with it.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses gives the best-known classical version. Pygmalion rejected the women of Cyprus because he considered them morally flawed, then carved a statue so beautiful that he treated it as a real beloved. During a festival for Venus, he prayed for a wife resembling the statue rather than asking the goddess to animate it explicitly.
Venus responded to his devotion, and the statue became a living woman. Pygmalion married her, and some later traditions call her Galatea. However, the name is not given in Ovid’s original account and became attached to the figure in later retellings.
The myth inspired the term “Pygmalion effect” and works including George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion. That modern usage is related to expectations shaping behavior, not a literal claim that statues become human.