Renaming true giants

As I mentioned before, words like athach and ettin are synonyms for "giant" that were co-opted by fantasy gaming for completely different meanings. Furthermore, the D&D rules make an arbitrary (and confusing) distinction between "giant" as a monster type and an entry in the monster manual. In earlier editions this was a distinction between "true giants" and "giant kin" (or demigiants?), but later editions simplified the terminology and made it as confusing as it is now.

The "true giants" are very obviously derived from the presumed giant varieties in Norse myth. The true/false terminology becomes pointless after a certain point: while the MM only provides six varieties of jotun, 3pp like The Slayer's Guide to Giants and Tome of Horrors series introduces countless more varieties. There is a giant for every terrain and then some, not including giants without "giant" in their name.

I would prefer to just ignore the distinction between "true giants" and "giant kin" as arbitrarily nonsense. It is easy for me to use words like athach, brobdingnagian, ettin, jotun, or thurse as synonyms for giant.

Norse mythology did not really distinguish jötnar ("giants") beyond maybe hrímþursar ("frost giants"), eldjötnar ("fire giants") and bergrisar ("mountain giants"; equivalent to D&D hill giants). Other categories like leirjötnar ("clay giants"; equivalent to D&D stone giants), sjórisar ("sea giants"; equivalent to sea-dwelling D&D storm giants), and vindþursar ("wind giants"; equivalent to D&D cloud giants) appear to be neologisms devised in recent times... probably by Wikipedia.

UPDATE 11/16/2018: Basically, all these names (which are taken from Icelandic if I understand correctly) just consist of a prefix indicating the giant's environment and a suffix indicating a generic degree of giant. The prefixes include berg ("mountain"), eld ("fire"), hrím ("frost"), leir ("clay"), sjór ("sea"), and vind ("wind"). The suffixes include jötunn (pl. jötnar), risi (pl. risar), and þurs (pl. þursar), all of which are synonyms meaning "giant". Pick a pair, any pair, because there is no wrong way to name them. Or, better yet, just use the translation into your native tongue. I am perfectly content with calling them clay giants, fire giants, frost giants, mountain giants, sea giants, and wind giants.

Research links

• http://freya.theladyofthelabyrinth.com/?page_id=554
• http://pandius.com/nlnddvnt.html
• http://ydalir.ca/norsegods/jotnar/
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jotnar.png
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/athach#Irish
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bergrisi#Old_Norse
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/brobdingnagian
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hrímþurs#Old_Norse
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/þurisaz
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/antiz
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/etunaz
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/risiz
• https://sagaofthetitans.weebly.com/joumltunn.html
• https://steemit.com/mythology/@anikekirsten/a-guide-to-norse-mythology-part-3-jotun
• https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=74513
• https://www.patreon.com/posts/myth-mondays-j-16048447

Further Reading

• Encyclopedia of Giants and Humanoids in Myth, Legend and Folklore By Theresa Bane