We know they aren't the same creature as Jeff Grubb's Archons
Ie there was no change to hound et al archons.
So the lore for Archons... was changed. Doesn't matter if that change was into a totally different creature or not there was an archon established in D&D lore... said lore was changed to accommodate a new Archon in 4e
How is introducing a new creature with the same name changing any lore?
When the colony which became my home state was named Victoria, this didn't change the "lore" of Lanefan's home town.
Nothing about hound, sword, lantern et al archons is changed by there
also being another, different creature that happens to have the same name.
In fact, given how prevalent the recycling of names is in the real world, it's unrealistic that there be no such thing in the gameworld.
I'm also curious whether they even acknowledge the old Archons and explain why they used their name for a "new" monster in W&M's?
From WP:W&M, pp 71, 73:
A number of monsters filled a role similar to that of angels. Archons, for instance, were the good equivalent of devils, heroic servants of good deities who destroyed evil wherever they found it. But the player characters could fight them only under the most extreme conditions, in which a servant of good turns to evil. Such storylines quickly become hackneyed . . . We needed a group to be servants of the gods, a group that made sense for all deities (not just specific deities or subsets), and one that made for good, old-fashioned monsters. . . .
[T]he heroes are supposed to be the primary butt-kickers of evil in the world. If a sword archon could show up and skewer a wicked necromancer, where does that leave the heroes? Obviously, an individual Dungeon Master can dow whatever he or she wants, but why have archons in the game if their role is limited to reminding players that good deities also have loads of minions? As it stood, these powerful creatures with their signature abilities hardly ever saw combat. Now, different angels have alignments that suit the gods they serve.
Having decided not to replicate archons, on the basis that they play no significant oppositional role (only in extreme and hackneyed storylines do the PCs confront them as foes) and don't support the right sort of fiction (because they crowd out the PC heroes as the primary doers of good deeds in the world), the name - I guess - becomes free for repurposing.
You seem to be happy to ignore the fact that Archon is the name of a D&D extraplanar creature that has appeared in the game since at least AD&D 1e. If they are a brand new creature as opposed to a changing/re-purposing of the original creature why use the name Archon?
<snip>
The conversation must have went something like... hey let's come up with this totally new creature and...give it a name that's been in use by another race of creatures since the 70's because... Well how about you tell us why
Archons have not been in the game since the 1970s. They are introduced in Jeff Grubb's MotP, which has a 1987 publication date. (I'm a bit surprised that this is not known to someone who cares so much about the integrity of the publication of archon lore!)
And archons aren't the only time that the D&D cosmology has recycled names. In DDG (p 72), Maruts are 6' tall humanoid wind spirits whose alignment is True Neutral and who serve as troops for the gods (doing damage by weapon type); whereas MotP (pp 86, 122) has Maruts who are quite different, being size L creatures who "appear as great, red-eyed, unliving giants carved from polished black stone" and are "simmilar to storm giants in demeanour and power", who live on Nirvana and are Lawful with Good tendencies (which makes it unclear exactly how their demeanour resembles storm giants!), who 1x/hour can use
earthquake,
lightning bolt or
control winds and who do 8d10 damage on a successful hit (ie they are precursors to 3E's inevitables).
(Note also that, DDG/L&L was still in print and extensively referenced by Jeff Grubb in his MotP. So, unlike with the name "archon", he didn't think it was even important to let the name become "freed up" before repurposing it!)
Obviously both sorts of marut are in some sense inspired by Hindu accounts of maruts; but likewise both sorts of archons are in some sense inspired by Gnostic accounts, which (
wikipedia tells us) "used the term Archon to refer to several servants of the Demiurge, the 'creator god', that stood between the human race and a transcendent God that could only be reached through gnosis. In this context they have the role of the angels and demons of the Old Testament."
Archons as servants of creator primordials, standing in opposition to the true gods, seem at least as true to this gnostic conception as Jeff Grubb's version - where they don't serve the Demiurge at all, but rather the gods of the Seven Heavens.