I'm surprised there's so much love for giants. To me they are the most boring monster possible: "Yeah it's just a regular dude, but bigger."
This. There are few things more
iconic to D&D than Dragons vs Giants, but there are also few things more
cliche in D&D. They're both big proponents of palette swaps (though at least giants have been getting somewhat more interesting in the meantime) (well not hill giants I guess); their use is mostly limited to NPCs since they can only be properly fought by parties of fairly high level, which through my very scientific anecdotal research approximately <checks notes> zero percent of D&D parties reach; every iteration of D&D has made aerial combat a giant pain in the ass (pun very much intended), so it's hard to run dragons "properly" without making PCs feel like useless sitting ducks; giants are mostly variant themed buckets of HP.
Both monster types harken back to the old old days of D&D and its older influences, which means most people are generally going to fall into two camps:
(1) People for whom dragons and giants play to certain kind of nostalgia for gamers who miss those old old days
(2) People who realize that the fantasy genre has evolved way beyond those days and has made room for far more interesting stories
There's a value statement in that, and I'm willing to admit that they reflect
my values; I'm not trying to crap on anyone preferences. I'm just saying that there's plenty more reasons to downvote dragons than the typical Survivor Thread contrariness.
PS: Re the "name" thing; to me at least that's incidental. I'd be playing the game whether it was called "Dungeons & Dragons", "Mazes & Monsters", "Swords & Serpents", or "Griffins & Gargoyles".
PPS: Okay, maybe not "Mazes & Monsters", I saw what that game almost did to Tom Hanks!