For ages, people have been intrigued by fantastical creatures, but not many manage to captivate the world as intensely or as diversely as the dragon has. From China to Greece, most ancient cultures had at least one version of this beast to tell about in legend, each with their own specific traits and their own name.

This essay will explore some of the different names given to what is now commonly referred to as ‘dragon’, and more specifically the meaning of the Old-English word ‘wyrm’.

Virtually every culture in the world has its own version of a draconic creature (Malone, 2012). It is not very clear where the idea found its origins. Jones (2000) argues that it may be a response to some innately human fear for snakes, using the snakelike features of most dragons to underline this hypothesis. Mayor and Andrienne (2000) believe that early fossil discoveries may have encouraged the conception of the design. Whether it will ever be figured out where the true origin lies after several millennia have passed, remains to be seen.

One of the arguably most famous draconic creatures is probably the Chinese dragon, also known as loong, long or lung. They are depicted with various animal-like forms such as turtles and fish, but are most commonly depicted as snake-like with four legs (Meccarelli and Marco 2021). Mostly used by the Royal families, the dragon was a symbol of power and good fortune (XiaoCongRong, 2021).

Several traditional Chinese customs still revolve around dragons (Yang, An, and Turner, 2005). The Spring Festival and the Lantern Festival are two such examples. During these, people will create a metres-long dragon figure that they parade through the city as part of a dragon dance. Yang, An, and Turner mention how this used to be a ritual to bring good weather and a good harvest, but that the current purpose is mostly for purely entertainment.

The Chinese dragon signifies very different things from most European dragons, where the dragon tends to be depicted more often as an aggressive, fire-breathing creature, very much unlike its Chinese counterpart which is more based in spirituality, a symbol of good fortune, and often a deity linked with rain and harmony.

The earliest mention in Greek mythology seems to be the Iliad, where King Agamemnon is said to have worn a blue dragon image on his sword belt and an emblem of a three-headed dragon on his breastplate (Drury, 2003). One of the most commonly told tasks the hero Heracles (Roman: Hercules) is told to have fulfilled is killing the Lernaean Hydra; a multi-headed serpent (Ogden, 2013). The word “Hydra” is also mostly translated with “water snake” or “sea serpent” in Greek. Another famous dragon from the ancient Greek times is the one that guarded the Golden Fleece that Jason and the Argonauts set out to steal.

The old-Greek word δράκων can be translated to both “dragon” as well as “snake” or “serpent” (Ogden, 2013). This word most likely inspired the Latin “draconem”, with the same meaning, which in turn probably formed the basis for the old-French “dragon”. This is probably also how the word ended up in the English language, somewhere during the early 13th century.

On the more Northern side of Europe, the dragons Nidhogg (old-Norse: Níðhöggr) and Fáfnir, both from Norse mythology, were commonly referred to as wyrms (Aurosjnc, 2017). Both these dragons were depicted with limbs, even if the number of wings may vary from source to source. This may be the origin of the word wyrm in old-English, which was used until roughly 1150 AD. 

The use of the word wyrm is also shown in the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, produced between 975 and 1025 AD. This poem refers to a dragon as both draca as well as wyrm, leading to believe that the two terms were used interchangeably (Rauer, Christine, 2003). This notion of mixing the terms is further enforced by paintings such as “Saint George and the Dragon” from Rostov in the late 14th century, which shows an image of a limbless and creature, but was named dragon still (Aurosjnc , 2017). 

As per 2022, the word wyrm has been targeted more towards the limbless side of draconic creatures. The most likely causes are probably famous modern media like the works of Tolkien, where wyrm is exclusively used to refer to limbless serpents. However, the popularisation of one meaning does not render the other meaning false by default. It would be wrong to say that the word wyrm exclusively refers to the limbless variety of the draconic creatures. As history has shown, multiple meanings of a word can coexist simultaneously and that is definitely how the word wyrm should be used henceforth.

References:

Aurosjnc (2017) https://auroswords.com/2017/04/14/dragons-wyverns-drakes-wyrms/, retrieved 1 August 2022

Drury, Nevill, The Dictionary of the Esoteric, Motilal Banarsidass Publ., (2003) ISBN 81-208-1989-6, p.79 

Jones, David E. (2000), An Instinct for Dragons, New York City, New York and London, England: Routledge, ISBN 0-415-92721-8

Malone, Michael S. (2012), The Guardian of All Things: The Epic Story of Human Memory, New York City, New York: St. Martin's Press, ISBN 978-1-250-01492-4

Mayor, Andrienne (2000), The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-05863-6

Meccarelli, Marco (2021). "Discovering the Long : Current Theories and Trends in Research on the Chinese Dragon". Frontiers of History in China. 16 (1): 123–142. doi:10.3868/s020-010-021-0006-6 ISSN 1673-3401.

Ogden, Daniel (2013), Drakon: Dragon Myth and Serpent Cult in the Ancient Greek and Roman Worlds, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-955732-5

Rauer, Christine (2003). Beowulf and the Dragon: Parallels and Analogues. Cambridge: Brewer. ISBN 0-85991-592-1. Retrieved 18 May 2010.

XiaoCongRong. 探究中华龙纹设计的历史流变(Exploring the historical evolution of Chinese dragon design)[J].今古文创,2021(46):92-93.

Yang, Lihui; An, Deming; Turner, Jessica Anderson (2005), Handbook of Chinese Mythology, Handbooks of World Mythology, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-533263-6