The likely origin of the word ‘dragon’

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.

The Taurus Mountains and influential storm god Tar(h)u behind the name

You may have heard of the Taurus Mountains that very much span the entire length of southern Minor Asia, or ancient Anatolia, separating the Mediterranean coastline from the Anatolian Plateau.

This is actually the Latin form of the name, almost identical to Greek ‘Ταύρος’ (pronounced as ‘tavros’) and near Turkish ‘Toros,’ that carries the meaning of ‘bull’ although I personally don’t reckon this was always the case.

A Semitic origin has been long speculated for it as Ernest Klein proposed (e.g., Aramaic ‘towr’ apparently means ‘bull’) as there doesn’t appear to be a cognate in the ancient Indo-Iranian tongues while Heinrich Kiepert moved along these lines in a slighty different direction lining up Aramaic ‘ṭūrā,’ which means ‘mountain.’

However, the root of the name may lie considerably closer as these mountains were considered the high ground/realm and accommodated many temples of storm gods, therefore equated to sacred, such as Hattian Tar(h)u.

Tar(h)u is actually very similar to or could be the same as Hurrian Teshub or Hittite/Luwian Tarhun/Tarhunt whilst the signature animal of them all was the sacred bull, hence the connection.

Come to that, the mountains and the southeastern region of Anatolia were the early grounds of the Hurrians who are likely those that introduced the cult of storm gods in the Near East.

Hence, I am most confident that ‘Tar(h)u’ is actually the origin behind the name ‘Tauru-s’ (Latin) or ‘Tauro-s’ (Hellenic) as it looks very similar both in structure and phonetically.

There should be noted that the Old Latin form of ‘Tauru-s’ was ‘Tarvu-s’ (or potentially ‘Tarvo-s’ even earlier) where ‘v’ appears on the other side of ‘r’ and in the same place as ‘h’ in Tar(h)u.

That ‘v’ in turn derived on the Etruscan 𐤉 (wau) which had a sound of ‘w’ instead so it would be like Tar(w)u in an early form (Etruscan) rendering a very similar pronunciation to Tar(h) come to that.

Furthermore, in ancient Hellenic (not Greek!) the diphthong ‘αυ’ wasn’t pronounced as ‘av’ nowadays but as ‘aʊ’ just as in ‘brown’ (English), therefore ‘ΤΑΥΡΟΣ’ would be voiced like ‘Towro-s’ which is very similar to the Latin form in pronunciation.

On top of it all, both ‘Tar(h)u’ (Hattian) and ‘Teshub’ (Hurrian)* share the same meaning of ‘conqueror’ while the name of the god in Hittite was Tarhun with a respective verb ‘tarhu’ that meant ‘to prevail/conquer.’

There has to be said that there is an Armenian word pronounced as ‘tɑɾˈχun’ (tarhun) that is actually the name of a plant carrying the sense of ‘dragon plant’ and could as well derive on the ancient Hittite god Tarhun.

After all, ancient Armenia overlapped the lands of the once Hittite Empire and Tarhun was the equivalent or the same god as Hurrian Teshub, a legendary feat of whom was slaying the dragon Illuyanka.

By implication, the god’s name Tar(h)u may more specifically carry then the nuance of ‘Conqueror of the Dragon.’

Consequently, ‘Tauru-s’ (Latin), ‘Tauro-s’ (Hellenic) or ‘Toro-s’ (Turkish) are in fact most likely the name of storm god Tar(h)u** himself, whose signature animal was the bull, as rendered in those languages and not the animal.

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*That said, I personally speculate that Teshub name means something like ‘Lord of the Bull’ instead, given the very similar form of Tešup (Teshup) in Hattian where ‘šup’ means ‘bull.’

** Very likely, the name of Tar(h)u with time came identified with his signature animal, the bull.