Dragon Etymology
Chapter I
Since the dragons appear in many mythologies, the sources of their etymology vary from language to language. In the previous post, I wrote that the oldest known dragon was found in China. So let’s first look at Chinese history. In Traditional Chinese, “dragon” is written as 龍 and pronounced as “Lóng”. As you can see better in the picture and the video above, this form consists of two shapes: the dragon’s body, and the head. The body on right (tail at upper right, legs on right), whiskered/fanged mouth at lower left, and eyes/crown at upper left. The same character means also emperor, sovereign, king, hero, thunder, or sound of thunder.
A little note to those eager to learn more: it is thought that the -lan suffix which denotes a wild, predatory animal in Turkish (i.e. aslan, kaplan, sırtlan) originates from the word Long, which means dragon in Chinese.
I am gonna write the etymology of “Dragon” in English on the next post.
- Chinese Dragon, LanguageWire
- Introduction to Chinese Characters, Brown University Website
- Etymology of Dragon, Useless Mythology
- Dragon, New World Encyclopedia
- Derkomai, Wiktionary
- Dragon in Chinese, Wiktionary