About two years ago I was working with dragons in my setting. I loved the names “Charsaug” and “Everblight” from Iron Kingdoms, “Lofwyr” from Shadowrun, Tolkien’s “Glaurung”, and of course Dragonslayer’s “Vermithrax Pejorative”. All of these felt like dragon names to me: ruinous curses, biblical plagues, natural disasters, guttural god-wyrms.
This was at a time that, dragon names by some major publishers just... didn’t whet my appetite. They didn’t feel like destructive forces of nature personified, or malign gods come to raze and torment. Most of the names I seemed to bump into were all Z’s, X’s, and apostrophes.
So I made this list to kind of slap around bits and pieces until you got a decent-sounding dragon name. Some work better than others, and it’s obvious that I put more thought into some colors than others. It should also be noted I didn’t include any metallic, or gemstone, or weird colors because in my home-brew worlds (typically) there are no “good” dragons.
Names for dragons
All Dragons:
fing
fang
Lung
saur
Laur
Rung
Rug
Thryx
Rex
fwyr
Mal
Blight
Warp
Gor
Rath
Ruin
Thrax
Connections:
iel
a
en
us
or
el
il
eld
ius
an
Red:
Volo
Char
Mag
Ano
Orch
Volc
Vulk
Tyr
Tyran
Hel
Pyro
Black:
Caust
Mire
Bog
Pest
Skol
Brine
Brack
Tar
Corros
Mort
Gloam
Fester
Green:
Faug
Lurk
Laug
Adder
Coil
Viper
Serp
Snok
Naga
Pyth
Mist
Scath
Venom
Blue:
Strato
Mira
Dune
Arid
Sahar
Evap
Salin
Thar
Tenger
Drought
Sturm
Bolt
Krak
Wing
White:
Tundra
Cryo
Frost
Bite
Chill
Hoar
Gale
Cryst
Wite
Shiver
Whip
This will be blasphemous in the face of superior nerds, but my favorite fantasy book is Eragon. In that book dragons have characteristics just like any other race. They have common themes, but each could be good or evil. Also the color of their skin has no bearing on their morality. #DontSeeColor
ReplyDeleteThat's cool man! I was already graduating high-school with Eragon came out, and firmly entrenched in Weis/Hickman and Salvatore. So I haven't read those books.
DeleteYeah, as I slowly home-brew my own dragons, I step further away from the Gygaxian spectrum and descriptors, but find mine are still universally villains. I think Smaug had a very heavy impact on me and my imagination growing up.
I like "lung," because dragons have big lungs with which to blow fire and breath all that oxygen they need to power all the muscles to fly. I mean a dragon has to be like a marathon runner.
ReplyDeleteYeah! It's also a reference to their breath-weapons, as dragons literally exhale something referencing their nature. It's also an intentional happy coincidence it crosses over with a transliteration for the Chinese word for dragon.
Delete