I have a sneaking suspicion that your source for this take on the myth is Ovid's retelling. You know, Ovid, the Roman poet who rewrote Greek myth to suit his political agenda by shoving rape and sexual assault into every single myth he (re)wrote. Yeah, him.
Just because Ovid's version is the most complete version that we have access to, it doesn't mean that was the mainstream belief of the time. Also, Ovid wrote about Hermaphroditus hundreds of years after other sources that contradict what he says. Primary sources mentioned date sometime between 1 - 4 BCE (BC). Ovid wrote Metamorphoses in 8 CE (AD). So, what do these sources say about the origins of Hermaphroditus?
"Hermaphroditos (Hermaphroditus), as he has been called, who was born of Hermes and Aphrodite and received a name which is a combination of those of both his parents. Some say that this Hermaphroditos is a god and appears at certain times among men, and that he is born with a physical body which is a combination of that of a man and that of a woman, in that he has a body which is beautiful and delicate like that of a woman, but has the masculine quality and vigour of a man. But there are some who declare that such creatures of two sexes are monstrosities, and coming rarely into the world as they do they have the quality of presaging the future, sometimes for evil and sometimes for good."
--Diodorus Siculus, Library of History
"In a description found on the remains of a wall in Halicarnassus, Hermaphroditus' mother, Aphrodite, names Salmacis as the nymph who nursed and took care of an infant Hermaphroditus after being placed in her care, a very different version than the one presented by Ovid."
--Wikipedia summary of The Invention of Marriage: Hermaphroditus and Salmacis at Halicarnassus and in Ovid by Allen J. Romano
"APOLLO: Well, my loves never prosper; Daphne and Hyacinth were my great passions; she so detested me that being turned to a tree was more attractive than I; and him I killed with a quoit. Nothing is left me of them but wreaths of their leaves and flowers.
HERMES: Ah, once, once, I and Aphrodite--but no; no boasting.
APOLLO: I know; that is how Hermaphroditus is accounted for. But perhaps you can tell me how it is that Aphrodite and Charis are not jealous of one another."
--Lucian, Dialogues of the Gods
To summarize, I'll leave you with thise quote here. Yes, it's from another blog, but their words perfectly describe just exactly what's going on here.
"Ovid was the first, as far as we know, to narrativize the relationship between Salmacis, the nymph whose name is given to the infamous spring she inhabits, and Hermaphroditus, the young son of Hermes and Aphrodite... As we shall see, Ovid departs greatly from the tradition that preceded him in his articulation of the tale. Like Alcithoe, he aims to enchant the reader’s mind with a new sort of story, to weave the known figure of Hermaphroditus into the mythical framework of his poem."
--Reclaiming the Story: Ovid’s Mythological Hermaphrodite
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