By and large, the English word ‘dragon’ appears to come via the Norman ‘dragun’ from the Old French (Frankish) ‘dragon’ (that in turn maybe from its Old Occitan namesake) which traces further back to the Latin ‘draco’ or ‘dracco’ and eventually down to ancient Greek (Koini, Common) ‘Δράκων’ (ðrakon).

Nonetheless, the latter definitely derives on the earlier Hellenic ‘ΔΡΑΚΩΝ’ (pronounced as ‘dra’kun’ instead) while the Latin form may as well derive, as it often happens, on the Anatolian tongues or Etruscan, which shows itself many similarities to Lydian, Phrygian and Lycian.

That said, that may not quite be the case yet and, as mentioned in another post, there is an Armenian word (տարխուն) pronounced as ‘tɑɾˈχun’ (tarhun) that is actually the name of a plant carrying the sense of ‘dragon plant,’ which could as well derive on the name of the very ancient Hittite storm god Tarḫun since the two are very much identical.

After all, ancient Armenia overlapped the lands of the once Hittite Empire and the Mitanni while Tarḫun was the equivalent or the same god as Hattian Tar(h)u and Hurrian Teshub, a legendary feat of whom all was slaying the mighty dragon Illuyanka.

By implication, the god’s name Tarḫun may not only  carry the meaning of ‘conqueror’ but also more specifically then the nuance of ‘Conqueror of the Dragon.’ For that matter, in cuneiform Hattian Tar(h)u’s name appears also as ‘Daar(h)u’ which in turn could reflect on his Hittite counterpart as ‘Daarḫun’ indicating an interchange between ‘t’ and ‘d’ as first letter in the names.

The other way round, the English ‘tar-ragon’ (little dragon) derives on Middle French ‘tar-gon’ and that from Latin ‘tragonia’ tracing all the way down to Hellenic ‘ΔΡΑΚΩΝ’ (drakun) again that not only shows the same interchange between ‘t’ and ‘d’ but also a shift of the ‘r’ on the other side of the initial ‘a.’

Therefore, the same interchange between ‘t’ and ‘d’ as well as shift of ‘r’ may have occured between ‘Tar-ḫun’ and ‘ΔΡΑΚΩΝ’ (dra’kun) conveyed from Anatolia across the Aegean and further afield, with the former the apparent origin of the very word.

Come to that, note also that the ‘ḫ’ in ‘Tarḫun’ was pronounced as ‘χ’ where the respective letter ‘χ’ was pronounced as an ‘aspirated k’ in Hellenic in the same position so there is further phonetic accordance between the two apart from their structure.

Even more so when linguists seem to have established a connection between Greek ”Δράκων’ (ðrakon) and Armenian ‘tɑɾˈχun’ (tarhun) in the first place.

Ultimately, Hittite and Hattian are far older tongues and Tarhun a far older name so the direction is obvious in this case.

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PS The above mentioned also suggest that Hellenic ‘ΔΡΑΚΩΝ’ could have had an earlier, or alternate, form of ‘ΔΡΑΧΩΝ’ with effectively the same pronunciation (dra’kun).

Note also the name Τράχωνες (tra-chones), a neighbourhood in Athens, coming from an earlier form of ‘τραχών’ (‘tra-‘chon,’ stressed on the last syllable instead) that has no known etymology.

Yet, it would be pronounced as ‘tra’kun’ in ancient Hellenic which falls perfectly in accord with ‘ΔΡΑΧΩΝ’ or ‘ΔΡΑΚΩΝ’ with the same interchange of ‘τ’ (t) and ‘ð’ (d) at the beginning to further support the above – and I am pretty sure it has got the same origin.