A mermaid is a legendary aquatic creature with the head & torso of human female and the tail of a fish. The male version of a mermaid is called a merman; gender-neutral plurals could be merpeople or merfolk. Various cultures throughout the world have similar figures.
Much like sirens, mermaids in stories 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 used the same word for both 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.
Prior to the mid 19th century, mariners referred to Manatee and Dugongs as mermaids.(Taken from :wikipedia.org)
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