D&D General What monster names are public domain?

[Morrus]

Goblin is, of course. Mind Flayer isn’t.

I’d one were to go through the MM, how many of the creature names are from mythology and how many are original to D&D?

 

[Yora]

I'd guess 2:1...

 

[MGibster]

It seems that most of the dragons would be public domain as even Ancient Red Dragon is a bit generic.

 

[Alzrius]

I suspect that a lot of the less generic names for demons and devils are specific to D&D. Not all of them, certainly; "balor" comes from Celtic mythology, as I recall, and it's no secret that "succubus" goes back centuries. But "nalfeshnee," "marilith," etc. are almost certainly original to the world's oldest tabletop RPG.

 

[overgeeked]

Probably close to 80-90%. A lot of the names are old myths and legends but some of the lore is distinct.

 

[Maxperson]

Angels, Deva, Animated Objects(those are in all kinds of myths, Disney, etc.), Banshee, Basilisk, maybe Bugbear, Cambion, Centaur, Chimera, Cockatrice, Couatl, Cyclops, Lich, Demons...

It seems like there's more that are not original to D&D than are.

 

[J.Quondam]

How public domain work with respect to word combinations like "violet fungus," "ice devil" or "gibbering mouther". The individual words are PD, but are the concepts as monsters PD?

 

[bedir than]

It seems that most of the dragons would be public domain as even Ancient Red Dragon is a bit generic.

You may have your dragons backwards. The Red is one of the most common in the public conversation. The metallics seem to be a D&D invention.

Plus there are several dragons that are very rare in D&D that are common in the real world lore (Lung and other Asian varieties including the jaculus).

 

[Parmandur]

It seems that most of the dragons would be public domain as even Ancient Red Dragon is a bit generic.

Using a color and a dragon is probavly not going to raise any eyebrows, but just about all the details (Blue Dragons breath lightning) would probably be copyrightable. Indeed, "blue dragons live in deserts and breath lightning" was a specific example that the IP lawyer on the Opening Arguments podcast used for what he would consider protected IP.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Doing a relatively quick dive, "berbalang" is one you might not expect to be public domain but is (it's Filipino), but it looks like the majority of aberrations are unique to D&D (helped along by the fact that almost all Quori are both non-mythically named and aberrations.) Almost all beasts just use common animal names which obviously can't be copyrighted, but there are a few that stand out like "fastieth" and "quipper" which are not common animal names. (Interestingly, "jaculi" is not--it's the plural form of "jaculus" or "iaculus," literally meaning "one who is thrown," referring to a dragon-like serpent creature or "javelin serpent.")

Interestingly, "couatl" is probably copyrightable, but "coatl" (no "u") is not, because it's just a Nahuatl word that means "serpent" (or "twin," apparently?) Likewise, feathered serpents in general can't be copyrighted, though making them specifically celestials might be tricky. Any angel with a word-mashup name is probably out, but angels in general and several of the types (archon, deva, planetar, solar, etc.) I'd say it's about 50/50 on whether any given celestial name (obviously not their appearance/nature/etc.) is public domain or not.

Constructs lean pretty heavily toward copyright rather than public domain, in large part because of the modrons, but there are plenty (e.g. golems) that aren't. As others have said, color + dragon and even metal + dragon is almost certainly not enough purely in terms of naming, since (for example) Green, Blue, White, Bronze, and Gold dragons (plus Brown) are all found in Anne McCaffrey's work and almost certainly some of them predate her. You might want to be careful about making "gold dragon" etc. actual categories per se, but the name alone is probably public domain.

I won't dig too much deeper, this has already taken a while, but yeah--some categories have TONS of non-copyrightable names, while others have very few. On balance, I'd say more are in the public domain than out, but it's hard to say and might depend in part on how exactly you define your criteria.