Dragon types? Drakes, dragonets, lindwyrms, wyverns, lyzards, oy vey...

One of the more frustrating aspects of fantasy gaming is the obsessive compulsion to classify things. Like dragons, for instance. Dragons are classified into distinct species by their body plan, size, color, etc. I have said before that my setting has thrown that out the window in favor of depicting dragons as unique mystical entities rather than species. That said, I still take issue with the absurd terminology...

Supposed names for dragon types

Different languages have their own words for "dragon," and it in only in modern fantasy writing that these terms have been used together and for distinct species.

For example:

• A giant serpent with a dragon's head is referred to as a guivre (French), orm (Norwegian), wyrm (English) or variations thereof depending on context.
• A dragon-headed serpent with two legs is referred to as a lindworm, lindorm or lindwyrm in English borrowings from Scandinavian languages or "Norse beast" in heraldry.
• A dragon with a pair of wings and legs is referred to as a wyvern.
• A winged serpent is referred to as an amphiptère (French, from Ancient Greek amphipteryx), pithon (English, variant of python) or jaculus (Latin, referring to a "javelin snake") in heraldry.
• The iconic western or heraldic dragon is referred to simply as a dragon (or drake in Teutonic myth).

The words guivre and wyvern are cognates with "viper." The words orm and wyrm are cognates with "worm," while lindworm is cognate with "lithe worm." The words dragon and drake derive from the same root. Notice a theme?

Actual names for dragon types

Anyway, this is where the provincialism causes problems. All of these creatures are dragons and it is the height of obsessive compulsion and anal-retentive to segregate them. Their appearances are not very consistent in myth and legend, and only modern writers try to provide a strict taxonomy. For example, in mythology serpents and dragons are synonymous, and there are no specific words for different body plans within the same culture.

What do you call this?

There is no standard terminology and the various forms are conflated in heraldry.  Furthermore, the size and shape of a dragon's limbs is often ignored: what if the dragon has four legs and two wings, but its front legs are tiny and it uses its wings to walk instead?

A wingless quadrupedal dragon (dragon-lizard?) does not have a historical name, so writers have resorted to malapropisms like drake or (my personal favorite) lyzard. Nor are there names for six-winged dragons, sea serpents, Chinese dragons or other combinations not mentioned above, but nobody seems to make much noise about that. (Trivia: the root for the Chinese word for "dragon" also meant "thunder.")

What do you call this? Ethiopian dream?

The word drake is overused. It is just the Teutonic word for "dragon," the two-winged four-legged kind, and drakes were depicted as such in myth. It is sometimes given a qualifier such as a fire-drake, earth-drake, ice-drake, sea-drake, nīþdraca ("hostile dragon") and so on.  D&D and Pathfinder use drake to refer to wyverns with an elemental affinity. As I said above, other fantasy writers use it to refer to wingless quadrupedal dragons. It may also refer to a male duck.

The word dragonet, rarely used in fantasy gaming in my experience, etymologically refers to any small dragon. It covers the "drakes," "pseudodragons" and "wyverns" found in D&D.

I prefer to just use descriptive phrases rather than inventing nonsense words that were never intended to be used together. This is just off the top of my head: sea-serpent, winged serpent, dragon-lizard, lithe-worm, javelin snake, firedrake, etc.

What do you call this? Shantak-bird?

Of course, some dragons are shape changers and thus may change their form at will. I do not see why they cannot be portrayed with variable body plans within a single species. If you want a British dragon, a Chinese dragon, or a Scandinavian dragon, then you should just say that the specific dragon you are using looks like that. You do not need to make an entirely new set of monsters for a simple change in appearance.

In fact, you should not limit yourself to the division between heraldic, guivre, lindworm, etc. Try something new... like a wyvern with wings for legs, a dragon with tiny arms that walks on its wings, a dragon with two legs and four wings, and so forth.

The chromatic/metallic distinction is needlessly limiting, as evidenced by all of the other kinds of dragons added in later years like gem dragons, planar dragons, ferrous dragons, imperial dragons, primal dragons, outer dragons, etc. Alternately, you could depict metallic dragons as Chinese dragons to distinguish them further from the chromatic dragons; this was originally how Gary Gygax depicted them.

Take a page from Warcraft or How to Train Your Dragon and give the existing dragons more flavor.

Gold Dragon circa AD&D 2e

Research links

• http://mistholme.com/dictionary/dragon/
• http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurDragonsAreDifferent
• http://www.blackdrago.com/species.htm
• http://www.blackdrago.com/types.htm
• http://www.lizaphoenix.com/encyclopedia/dragons.shtml
• http://www.miniatures-workshop.com/lostminiswiki/index.php?title=Dragons
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guivre
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/drake#Etymology_2
• https://rpgmaker.net/forums/topics/14469/?post=506980
• https://web.archive.org/web/20080410054830/http://www.eaudrey.com:80/myth/dragons.htm
• http://www.sage-eyes.com/the-classification-of-dragons/
• http://magicalfairie.tripod.com/dragonsworld.html
• https://wendyjargonncom.blogspot.com/2016/05/ethiopian-dragons.html
• http://www.blackdrago.com/whydrgn.htm