Some thoughts on medusas, maedars, and padrafytes

So I recently had some thoughts on etymology and wordplay as it related to D&D's medusas.

The word Gorgon ultimately originates from Greek gorgós, meaning "terrible, fierce, grim". In both Latin and Ancient Greek the word is of the feminine gender. There is no masculine counterpart that I could find, although the male given name Gorgias shares the same root. The word Gorgon may or may not be related to the word gargoyle, but if not then both still developed similar meanings independently: terrifying effigies used to protect sacred places.

Medusa's name seems to derive from Greek medeôn, meaning "guardian, queen". There is no masculine counterpart that I could find, although various modern writers have coined the name "Meduso" using Spanish gender declension. The third party OSR supplement Wyrms & Warlocks: Medusa's Hunger published by Goblinoid Games coins the name "medusan" to refer to a male medusa, a simple compound of medusa plus the suffix -an.

The name "maedar" seems to be a wholly invented word with no discernible etymology. I suspect it probably derived from playing around with the syllables in "medusa" plus the suffix -er, patterned after widower. 

In the third party d20 product Book of Templates, a half-medusa template is introduced, reprinting an earlier template written by Sean K. Reynolds. In the book, a half-human/half-medusa specifically is known under the name "padrafyte" and presented as a playable race instead of a template. I can only speculate on the etymology, but it seems to derive from padre ("father, priest") plus -phyte ("growth"). In other words, it means "growth like the father", referring to their resemblance to their non-medusa parent.

Anglish and fantasy

As I have opined before, I have a preference for linguistic purism when it comes to fantasy based on Anglo-Saxon mythology. There is in fact a term for this: Anglish. For example, I would call giants and zombies by the names ettins and liches, respectively, as these are the corresponding terms in Anglish. The same applies to concepts from Teutonic mythology: for example, I would call Midgard, Asgard, Alfheim and Jotunheim by the names of Midyard, Esyard, Elfham, and Ettinham, respectively.

The D&D "gorgon" is probably not based on the Greek bronze bull

I've seen a few articles, blogs, and vlogs claiming that the the D&D "gorgon" is based on the mythological "khalkotaur." This is complete bunk, in several ways. I've said this before, but I think it bears repeating.

Firstly, the D&D "gorgon" is clearly based on the catoblepas by way of Edward Topsell, who infamously confused the catoblepas with the gorgon Medusa in his 1607 bestiary The Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes and propagated further in works like Curious Creatures in Zoology.

Secondly, there's no such mythological monster as a "khalkotaur." That name is fakelore propagated by Wikipedia. There are the Tauroi Khalkeoi, or Bronze Bulls in English. (Not to be confused with the similarly named torture device, which itself may be mythical too.)

Thirdly, we have no evidence whatsoever that the D&D gorgon was inspired by the bronze bulls. They look and attack completely different: the former has iron scales and breathes petrifying fumes, the latter is made of bronze and breathes fire. Any similarities (i.e. both are metal bulls with breath weapons) appear to be pure coincidence.

Fun fact: Hacklopedia of Beasts includes an entry for the D&D gorgon, which not only gives it bat-like wings in contrast to typical depictions, but mentions that the monster is also known as "burakog" and "khalkotaur." And all this time I've just been calling it an iron bull.

Horcruxes and voldemorts

In past posts I lamented how archaic words like lich and phylactery have had their previously versatile meanings changed and shrunk by the vagaries of Gygax and his imitators. This means that I can no longer use them in their original meanings without confusing people who grew up on a diet of iterative fantasy. Not that it will actually stop me from using those words in their original capacities, as other authors have done before me, but it is annoying that my readers won't understand my meaning.

I recently discovered that voldemort is now a word. It derives from French vol de mort, meaning (roughly) "flight/theft of/from death." According to French speakers, this is grammatically sound but more appropriate for the technical speech of a police report (e.g. "theft of corpse"). A less stilted phrase would be Le Vol de la Mort, meaning either "the theft of death" or "the flight of death." Flight as in the flight of a bird or plane, not fleeing.

I would like to thank J.K. Rowling for coining this word. Prior to this, the fantasy genre didn't actually have a word for an evil wizard who cheats death. The word lich was used for this purpose due to Gygax's popularization, but as I have said before I consider that usage to be clunky and parochial. The benefit of voldemort is that its literal meaning relates to cheating death, and it's a well known fantasy word in the popular imagination.

The same goes for horcrux, also coined by Rowling. I've seen it used in NOS4A2 to refer to objects created to contain souls other than those of evil wizards, so its meaning is thankfully versatile. Prior to this, we only had phrases like "soul jar" and "zombie bottle" that weren't well known in the popular imagination.

These new words, voldemort and horcrux, are versatile. They can refer to Koschei and his hidden heart, Sauron and his cursed ring, Voldemort and his horcruxes, Arthas and his vampiric runeblade, etc. I should like to use them in my own writings from now on.

Cacoastrum, cagaster, iliaster, iliastrum, et al

While reading Mongoose's Infernum, I came across mention of "iliaster." One google search led to another, and I found myself referring to Paracelsus, Steven Brust's To Reign in Hell, Carl Jung, and so on. The search results have been screwed up by extraneous anime garbage, but I managed to find the origin and etymology of these words.

Iliaster and cagaster, also known as iliastrum and cacoastrum and other permutations, (the former sometimes spelled with a "y" at the start) are neologisms from the work of medieval alchemist Paracelsus. I've been completely unable to determine what they actually represent in his works due to a lack of reference material (fuck you internet), but I have been able to determine their etymology.

Iliaster, iliastrum, yliaster, or yliastrum et al comes from Latin hȳlē ("fundamental matter") + -aster/-astrum ("incomplete resemblance") or astēr/astrum ("star"). Possibly a play on the resemblance between the latter. Therefore, it means something like "matter of the stars" and/or "matter-like." Wikipedia calls it a synonym for prima materia.

Cacoastrum, cagaster, or cagastrum et al comes from Greek-derived caco- ("bad") and/or Latin cacō ("to defecate") and the same suffix as above. Again, possibly a play on the resemblance between the two. Therefore, it means something like "an ill star" and/or "shit of the stars." The former sense was used as a term in medicine relating to germ theory.

Fiction goes in completely different directions:

• Infernum used iliaster as the name for the power source used by demons and angels, which was only produced by God and human souls.
• To Reign in Hell used cacoastrum as the name for the substance of raw chaos and iliaster for the stuff of order.

I did consider using the neologisms in my own worldbuilding, but it's been so long that I don't even remember my original ideas. Oh well.

Renaming true dragons, revisited

So a feature of the D&D jargon that I've never been fond of is it's idiosyncratic taxonomy of dragons. I've ranted about this at length in previous posts, years ago. I guess it's time to revisit that with what I've learned in the meantime.

Basically, my problem is this: as of 5e (but a variation of this is true for all editions), the term "dragon" is used both for the general creature type as well as a subset thereof. 

The most recent 5e SRD offers the following idiosyncratic descriptions:

[A]n arrow of dragon slaying deals extra damage not only to dragons but also other creatures of the dragon type, such as dragon turtles and wyverns. [...] Dragons are large reptilian creatures of ancient origin and tremendous power. True dragons, including the good metallic dragons and the evil chromatic dragons, are highly intelligent and have innate magic. Also in this category are creatures distantly related to true dragons, but less powerful, less intelligent, and less magical, such as wyverns and pseudodragons.

I don't like the "true dragon" jargon because it's arbitrary, provincial, and confusing, especially to people who aren't D&D buffs. They're not true dragons, they're what folklore classification systems label "Western dragons" (although it doesn't actually make sense to call them that in the fantasy settings) plus a bunch of D&D-specific baggage like a Smaug-esque intelligent disposition and magical powers that vary by edition. Furthermore, the D&D canon includes a bazillion varieties of true dragons, much less their "lesser dragons" and "dragon-kin" cousins. 3pp like Legends & Lairs: Draconic Lore, Octavirate Presents Vol #4: The Forgotten, Pathfinder et al have introduced a bazillion more. At the very least, 5e could have used a slightly less confusing terminology like Witcher's "draconid" for the entire taxonomy including both "dragons" and everything else.

D&D can't even keep its own taxonomy straight, either. This is especially frustrating because it's not just an in-universe taxonomy, but actual game rules with implications for in-universe physics. Why is a dragon turtle considered a dragon but a hydra isn't? Why does an arrow of dragon slaying work against the former but not the latter? What's the criteria being used here? Hydras are giant reptiles with multiple heads and the magical ability to regrow severed heads. They're labeled dragons in folklore classification systems in reality.

The problem stems from trying to mash together myths from all over the world and pretend that they make sense together. In reality, dragon myths varied from region to region. No culture that I'm aware of had myths where the dragons were divided into different kinds based on their anatomy. Western dragons, eastern dragons, lindworms, etc didn't coexist in mythology, so nobody needed special terminology to distinguish them. They were all dragons. Not true dragons, not lesser dragons, not dragonkin... just dragons.

Even Tolkien didn't bother to develop elaborate taxonomies for his dragons. At most he offered functional and practical names like "fire-drakes" (dragons that could breathe fire) and "cold-drakes" (dragons that did not breathe fire).

Given all the various changes across the many editions and spin-offs, the distinction doesn't even provide much meaningful information anymore. It's an artifact of unplanned game development that later developers tried to retroactively justify and make sense of. Trying to keep track of the bazillion varieties of dragons by arbitrarily sorting them into categories based essentially on body type of all things is pointless. As Overly Sarcastic Productions points out, they're not products of natural evolution and their nature varies wildly between stories (such as "Prince Lindworm").

As far as I'm concerned, dragons are dragons. They can look like anything the storyteller wants and don't need a special invented name for every possible configuration. I think it's perfectly fine to use functional descriptive names like "winged quadrupedal dragon," "winged bipedal dragon," "wingless limbless dragon," "wingless bipedal dragon," or "wingless quadrupedal dragon."

Signing off...

Whatevermancy and suffixes

In this post, I wanted to discuss what would be possible ways to refer to practitioners of different kinds of magic as proscribed by the typical rules of the English language. I wanted to discuss how fantasy gaming bucks the English language, too.

We are all familiar with necromancers, right? Evil dudes dressed in goth fashion who raise zombies and stuff? Well, according to the Oxford dictionary necromancy is "the supposed practice of communicating with the dead, especially in order to predict the future."

How did that happen? I'm guessing thru the principle of "by extension," but I can't be sure.

Anyway, the -mancy suffix relates to divinations rather than all-purpose magical manipulation. Its derived suffixes include -mance (verb), -mancer (agent noun), and -mantic (adjective). Therefore a necromancer is someone who necromances, that is, practices the necromantic arts of necromancy or communing with the dead.

I don't expect anybody to pay attention to the dictionary meaning. But if you ever want to... a possible alternative to describe fantasy-style "necromancy" might use the suffix -kinesis ("movement"), -sophy ("wisdom"), or -urgy ("working") instead. As in necrokinesis, necrosophy, necroturgy, necrourgy, necrurgy or thanaturgy (I have seen all these forms mentioned online before). By extension, a practitioner would be a necrokineticist, necrosophist, necroturgist, or thanaturgist. The use of the necro- versus thanato- prefix is a subtle one: necro- relates to death and dead tissue, whereas thanato- relates to the concept of death in general.

Other suffixes are available, too. I have seen necronaut, necropathy, necroscope, and necrovoyance all used before.

• According to Wikipedia, a necronaut (from necro- + -naut) is someone who travels thru the afterlife.
• In the 1990 Nightlife roleplaying game, necropathy (from necro- + -pathy) is the power to speak with the dead; presumably patterned after necromancy, empathy, and technopathy.
• In the Necroscope novels by Brian Lumley, a necroscope (from necro- + -scope) is someone who speaks with the dead; as opposed the novels' version of a necromancer, who forcibly extracts information from corpses by dissecting them (which the dead feel due to the necromancy).
• Though strictly grammatically speaking, a necroscope would be an instrument used to examine the dead. Such an instrument appears in Netflix's The Order, here called a "necrophone" (from necro- + -phone). As the name implies, it is a magical telephone that lets you speak with the dead.
• The word necrovoyance (from necro- + voyance) is listed on The Free Dictionary as a synonym for necromancy. It is presumably patterned after clairvoyance.

The -kinesis suffix relates to movement, the -mancy suffix to divination, the -naut suffix to traveling, the -path suffix to feeling, the -scope suffix to examining, the -sophy suffix to wisdom, the -urgy suffix to working, and the -voyance suffix to remote viewing. These may have further derivative suffixes.

For example:

• A telekineticist is telekinetic. S/he practices telekinesis and studies telekinetics, the movement of faraway objects with the mind.
• A necromancer is someone who necromances or necromanticizes. S/he practices the necromantic arts of necromancy, communing with the dead.
• A psychonaut practices psychonautics, the art of navigating travels through the mind. S/he studies psychonautical charts.
• A telempath has telempathic senses and practices telempathy, experiencing the feelings of others at a distance.
• A necroscope has necroscopic senses. S/he practices necroscopy, observation of the dead.
• A philosopher is a student of philosophy.
• A theurgist is some who theurges or engages in theurgic acts. S/he practices theurgy, the evocation of spirits.
• A clairvoyant has clairvoyance, the power of remote viewing.

Feel free to do your own independent research too. This post is not exhaustive in the least.

Druids, dryads, and hamadryads

So I wanted to touch on dryads in this post. Two things: the etymological relationship between druids and dryads, and the mythological relationship between dryads and hamadryads.

In the past the word dryad was used to mean druidess, i.e. a female druid. By virtue of the transitive property, one could argue that a druid therefore could be a male wood nymph or nymphus. I've never seen anyone ever do this, but if you want a male dryad that isn't a satyr and care about the inflection of Greco-Latin loanwords then druid might fit the bill.

In Greek myth, a hamadryad is a type of dryad whose life is bound to a specific tree. If the tree dies, then so does the hamadryad. In fantasy tabletop games, this unique of hamadryads has been folded into dryads in general. This results in attempts to integrate hamadryads to rely on distinguishing them from dryads through any number of arbitrary means that have nothing to do with the original myths.

I generally have little interest in any of these modern distinctions, except for one I found in homebrew. One homebrew page I read introduced a fascinating distinction between dryads and hamadryads for gaming that reflects the original myths. Here the hamadryad arose as the personified soul of a tree, as in myth and the dryad of the Monster Manual. Meanwhile, the dryad was the child of a hamadryad and a father of another race such as human, elf, fairy, or satyr. A dryad could choose to live as adventurer like her father's race or could bind to a tree and live identically to a hamadryad in a manner consistent with the MM's dryad. I like this idea and would like to use it in my own worldbuilding sometime.

© 音楽ナスカ

Resource links:

• https://www.theoi.com/Nymphe/NymphaiHamadryades.html
• https://www.1d4chan.org/wiki/Hamadryad
• https://www.latin-is-simple.com/en/vocabulary/noun/8773/
• https://www.latin-is-simple.com/en/vocabulary/noun/8774/
• https://web.archive.org/web/20190923154852/http://www.chqhost.com/LairFiles/races/dryad.html
• http://aidanem.com/word-family-tree.html
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/druid#English
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dryad#English
• https://www.google.com/books/edition/Druids/9yITDQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=dryad+druidess&pg=PT27&printsec=frontcover

What is ichor?

 In Greek mythology, ichor is the blood of the gods. It is sometimes said to come from the ambrosia and nectar they consume, a feature of several Proto-Indo-European-descended religions, which they must continue to consume or else lose their immortality (or alternately their ability to function). Although in the case of the Greek gods specifically this was less than clear cut.

Ichor has gone on to have additional meanings beyond the Greek origin. In now archaic medical usage it refers to "watery discharge from a wound."

In the video game series Command & Conquer, "ichor" is the Scrin's name for Tiberium. You can probably guess why.

In some urban fantasy fiction, "ichor" is a term for the blood of vampires. This may be seen in Marvel's take on vampires and elsewhere online.

Sometimes authors who don't know any better use it as a synonym for blood, especially the blood of demons and Lovecraftian monsters. Author Ursula K. Le Guin, in her essay "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie," calls the term "the infallible touchstone of the seventh-rate."

And sometimes ichor is the urine of the gods. I think I'm gonna be sick...

Names for soul jars

I’m currently on a kick where I think of multiple aliases for a concept such as a monster or magic item. In this post, the phylactery of the lich.

The word “phylactery” has several meanings according to wiktionary: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/phylactery

Here are some other names for the same concept: soul jar (used by tv tropes), horcrux (coined by J.K. Rowling from random syllables, though that hasn’t stopped fans from inventing their own etymology), animarium (coined by myself from Latin anima and -arium), secret heart (used by Palladium), spirit jar, soul gem, etc.

The basic concept of a soul jar is simple: it contains someone’s soul. Why it does is, of course, highly variable. It might be a funerary object as with the mid-Eastern Han Dynasty. It might be a prison. It might be a means of enslaving the soul’s owner as with Afro-Caribbean zombies. It might be a way to cheat death as with Koschei the Deathless, Voldemort, and the D&D lich.

And that’s basically everything I can think of right now. 

Minotaurs and minotrices

So I was reading Masters and Minions Horde Book 2: Maze of the Minotaur when I came across the nonce word "minotrices," which the book called female minotaurs. I found this rather interesting, since while it looks like a Latin word it isn't real Latin and doesn't follow the standard rules for inventing Latin words.

The Latin word for Minotaur is Minotaurus. This is a masculine proper noun for which no feminine inflection exists because the name is a compound of Minos (the historical king of Crete, whose name itself became a royal title) and taurus (a bull), thus meaning "the bull of Minos" or "the king's bull" (and which could be further shortened in English to kingsbull, by analogy to kingsman). The Latin word for a cow is vacca and so the feminine counterpart would logically be the Minovacca rather than, say, the Minotaura. (Compare with my prior post on incubus/incuba and succubus/succuba.)

Yet the nonce word "minotrices" doesn't follow this pattern. The suffix -trices is the plural form of the Latin suffix -trix. This suffix is the feminine form of -tor, which indicates an agent noun (e.g. executor, executrix). Even stranger: the book writes the singular form as "minotrice," which is ungrammatical as -trice is in the ablative case and not the nominative.

Apparently the author of the book misinterpreted the English word Minotaur as a Latin agent noun based on superficial phonetic similarity and went from there. While this may seem nonsensical, you may perhaps contrive a functional meaning by delving further into the etymology of Minos. While in Cretan it means "king," it may descent from a Proto-Indo-European word meaning "ascetic" (although such a reading is debated). So as an agent noun (albeit redundant, unless one is aiming for wordplay), it would mean one who lives ascetically e.g. in caves or mazes.

Or you could just call a female minotaur by "minotauress," a neologism dating back as far as at least 1916.

More folklore accurate names for the genie tribes

While reading Legends of the Fire Spirits by Robert Lebling, I learned than Tunisian folklore tells of genies associated with the air, the sea, and the land. (This is also repeated in Between Sand & Sea for Ars Magica, if you want game-ready details for a "medieval authentic" game.) This inspired me to assign new names to some tribes of genies in the OGL rules, as an optional rule for those who prefer folklore authentic jargon rather than the inventions of Gygax and co.

In the OGL rules, the five tribes of genies are Djinn (air), Efreet (fire), Marid (water), Shaitan (earth), and Jann (n/a). Under this option, the Djinn, Marid, and Shaitan would be renamed Leriah (الرياح), Baharia (بحرية), and Siadna (سيادنا), respectively.

Incubae and succubae

I learned something interesting about incubi and succubi recently. The words themselves are derived from Latin. The stem incub- means "lie above," whereas succub- means "lie below." The endings -a and -us are feminine and masculine, respectively.

So that gives us four demons to work with. The incubus is a masculine demon who lies atop his victim, whereas the incuba is his feminine counterpart. The succuba is a feminine demon who lies below her victim, whereas the succubus is her masculine counterpart.

There is so much more to explore, including nightmares, cambions, malcubi, and more. Unfortunately, I'll have to save those musings for later...

My pet peeve: alseids, cecaelia, alacorns, *taurs, and other misused and invented monster names

So a common pet peeve of mine is when Pathfinder bestiaries get etymology and mythology wrong, because this tends to bleed over into discussions of actual mythology and result in tons of misinformation being spread.

Here are a few examples:

• In Greek myth, the alseides are the dryads of groves, who liked pranking travelers. They were not deer-centaurs, that's WarCraft's dryads.
• The cecaelia, an octopus-mermaid, is not a mythological creature. 
• The alacorn, a winged unicorn, is not a mythological creature either. However, the "Ethiopian Pegasus" was a breed of winged horned horse recounted in the natural histories of Pliny.
• The centaurs are self-explanatory, though the term itself is used more freely in Greek myth to refer to more than just the horse/men hybrids. Weirdly, the word taur (literally "bull" in Latin) is used to describes centaurs with non-equine lower halves, even though the word centaur already served that role in Greek myth. E.g. horse-centaur, fish-centaur, bull-centaur, etc.

I don't know why, but I really don't like it when people invent nonsense names when they could just use regular words like "deer-centaur," "octopus-mermaid," "winged unicorn," etc.

Sorry for the repetitive and probably pointless posting. I'll try to do better next time.

Nymphae and nymphi

In a previous post I mentioned that in Greek myth the nymphs have numerous male counterparts including centaurs, dactyls, tritons, satyrs, etc. To my knowledge, they have never been collectively referred to by a single name in contrast to nymphs. I suppose there is a first for everything.

The word nymph, which translates to "bride" and refers to myriad minor goddesses in Greek myth. It might interest you to know that nympha and nymphess are valid synonyms, and that the masculine inflection is nymphus, which translates to "bridegroom" and was a rank in the Mithraic mystery cult.

That was my fun fact for the day.

Was Argus Panoptes a cyclops?

While reading about Greek mythology, I noticed something interesting. One of the elder cyclopes was named Arges. Another hundred-eyed giant was named Argus. Both of these names seemingly derive from an Ancient Greek root ἀργός meaning "bright, quick."

This leads me to suspect that these two may be multiplications of the same figure. Mythology, owing to its nature as orally-passed storytelling, grows and changes over time like kudzu. Multiplications of the same character or monster are just one example of the divergences that accumulate.

Previously I wrote posts speculating about the relationship between the cyclopean giants with variable numbers of eyes drawn from Greek mythology: monoclopes, biclopes, triclopes, megaclopes. (Of course, the naming scheme is nonsensical since cyclops itself is a combination of cycle and ops.) I find it highly amusing and ironic that mythology might have gotten the same idea millennia before me.

Research links

• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ἀργός#Ancient_Greek
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Κύκλωψ#Ancient_Greek
• https://www.theoi.com/Gigante/GiganteArgosPanoptes.html
• https://www.theoi.com/Titan/Kyklopes.html

The many names of the sea-dog

While researching heraldry and monsters, I was surprised to learn that creatures like the alphyn, enfield, and sea-dog (or water-dog) were actually variations on the same thing.

The onchú (literally "water-dog," probably from on "water" + cú "hound") appears to be either an otter or a mythologized version thereof. Through assimilation with the heraldic sea-dog and phonetic mutation into the alphyn and enfield, it acquired features like a fishy mane and avian talons.

• The sea-dog is a canine beast with fishy features including scales and fins.
• The alphyn is a vaguely lupine beast with avian talons and a long knotted tail.
• The enfield is a vulpine beast with avian talons.

Research links:

• https://abookofcreatures.com/2017/04/03/onchu/
• http://mistholme.com/dictionary/alphyn/
• http://mistholme.com/dictionary/enfield/
• http://mistholme.com/dictionary/sea-monsters/
• https://www.sacred-texts.com/lcr/fsca/fsca73.htm
• https://www.sarahsawyer.com/2012/03/mythic-creature-the-alphyn/

What do you call a mermaid with an octopus half?

Years ago I wrote a post about how the neologism "cecaelia" commonly used for octopus-mermaids on the internet is actually meaningless gibberish. I still believe that, but in this post I wanted to play with folk etymology.

The girl's name Celia is a short form of both Caelia ("heavenly") and Cecilia ("blind, dim-sighted"). The otherwise gibberish name "cecaelia" sounds like it might be a play on these names.

Caelius ("heavenly") and Caecilius ("blind; invisible") were both Roman family names. Perhaps the name of the species is actually something like cilophyte (see my old post for an etymology analysis), but some families of cilophytes have surnames like Caelius or Caecilius. After some confusion while talking with fishermen, the surnames end up being mangled and mistakenly refer to the entire species.

Or perhaps the name derives from a phrase like "Ecce Caelia!" meaning "Look Caelia!" (where Caelia is the person being addressed) or "Here is Caelia."

Or it might be derived from caelo ("I carve") + -ia (abstract suffix), meaning something like "carvery."

Of ogres and orknies

Ogres and orcs are standard monsters in fantasy gaming, drawing from their depictions in Tolkien's Middle Earth and European fairy tales. The etymology of orc and ogre is a bit more complicated than that, however.

Orcus

The words ogre and orc descend from the word Orcus. Orcus was a Greco-Etruscan god of the underworld, whose name literally translates to "oath." He punished perjurers and accompanied the goddess Dike ("justice"). His appearance changed dramatically over time.

In D&D, the name Orcus is applied to a demon prince of the undead. Not only is he infamous for employing the undead, he is even rumored to have created them in the first place.

Orcs and orknies

The word orc, as used by Tolkien, descends from Old English compounds orcþyrs and orcneas (plural). The  morpheme þyrs means "monster, demon, giant," and the morpheme -neas means "corpse." The morpheme orc has additionally been speculated related to orca, thus meaning "sea monster."

However, nobody is sure of the exact meanings. The orcneas have been various translated as "evil spirits," "demon corpses," "devil corpses," etc. I suppose that, if you were making a pun on the various etymologies, it could be translated as "sea devil" or "sea corpse."

C.S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe mentions "orknies" (singular is apparently “orkny”) as one of the monstrous races that joins the White Witch's army. This is clearly an Anglicization of orcneas! This should not be surprisingly, as Lewis and Tolkien were friends.

Ogres and orchi

Another descendant of Orcus is the Italian orco (plural orchi), translating to "ogre, orc." The orchi of fairy tales were hairy beasts, quite unlike the ugly human portrayals of ogres. It is here that the two general archetypes of "brute" and "lord" appear. Strange as it may seem, the enchanted prince in Beauty and the Beast is an example of the latter.

©2008 EricCanete

The word ogre has several derivatives created by adding suffixes. An ogress is "a female ogre," an ogret or ogrillon is "a young or small ogre," ogrette is a synonym for ogress or ogret, ogrish or ogry means "resembling or pertaining to an ogre," ogrishly means "like an ogre," and ogrism means "the character or manners of an ogre."

You might notice that D&D used the name ogrillon for a hybrid of orc and ogre. It is actually a loanword from French that refers to the child of an ogre. So I suppose that the D&D monster's context would be true if taken literally.

Comparative mythology

In anthropology and comparative mythology circles, the word "ogre" is used to refer to any man-eating giant in folklore. It includes European ogres, Arabic ghouls, Persian divs, Algonquin baykok and wendigo, Japanese oni, Indian rakshasa, etc. This is completely different from the D&D usage, obviously.

I noticed a few interesting parallels between different ogre myths:

• Orcus is a god of the underworld. The orknies are (potentially) demonic corpses. The Athabaskan wechuge and Japanese oni are demons of the underworld that visit Earth to eat humans. The oni are subjects of Enma, the great king of hell.
• Orcus is a god of oaths who punishes perjurers, yet his namesake refers to cannibal giants. The Algonquin wendigo sometimes arises as a result of someone being cursed for breaking the taboo against cannibalism.

I feel inspired to devise my own mythos that references all of these. Maybe something like Pellatarran orcs? Eh, I can always figure it out later!

The sa'ir, a forgotten monster

The sa'ir is a weird monster that appeared only briefly in 2e as part of the lamia’s ridiculously convoluted ecology (ridiculously convoluted ecologies were extremely common in the days of AD&D). It is a lion with a goat's hooves and horns. It was never referenced again, and 3e seemingly introduced male lamia which rendered its existence superfluous. That has not stopped conversions to 5e, however.

The name immediately stood out to me because I recognized it as probably derived from the biblical sa`iyr (also sâʻîyr, sâʻir). As an adjective the word means "shaggy," as a noun "he-goat." By analogy, the word is translated as "faun" or "satyr."

In Isaiah 34:14, the sa'ir ("wild goat") is mentioned alongside the lilith ("screech owl") as one of the many beasts inhabiting the desert and night. As Lilith is the name of a night-haunting demon in Mesopotamian myths that fulfills the same archetype as the lamia of Greek myth, I suspect this is where the game's writer got the idea to introduce the sa'ir as a monster related to the lamia/lilith.

Otherwise, the sa'ir appears to be an invention of the game's writer, derived from the biblical verse plus the lamia as described by Topsell and depicted in Tudor heraldry. However, there are a couple of heraldic and artistic monsters that loosely resemble it and might have influenced its design:

• The chatloup (French for "cat-wolf") is a fantastic beast with the face of a cat, the body of a wolf, and the horns of an antelope. 
• The theow (also thoye, thos) is a fantastic beast with the body of a mastiff or wolf, cloven hooves and a bovine muzzle and tail. Dragonlore #71 speculates that it was the result of careless copying transforming depictions of normal wolves into bovine beasts.
• The homeric Chimera was described as having the body of a goat, the head of a lion, and the tail of a dragon/snake. Further variations on this design might add horns to the lion's head.

I do not really see a reason to revive it as a relative of the lamia. At least in my campaign setting, the lamia are the transformed souls of scorned lovers in loose accordance with their mythological origins and not a self-reproducing race that arbitrarily serves a demon lord. Even in the biblical verse, it was only intended as one of the creatures inhabiting the same environment as the she-demons, not a relative.

I can imagine reviving it in other capacities, however. Maybe it is a mad wizard's experiment, as lazy game's writers are wont to resort to for explanation? Maybe it is a variant of the aberrant beasts spawned by the chimera? Maybe it is the male counterpart to the female chimera? Maybe it is a liocorno related to the bicorn and unicorn? Maybe it is related to the chatloup and theow, just another fantastic beast that is natural to fantasyland? Maybe, as its name suggests, it is a relative of the satyrs?

There are any number of possibilities.