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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Marandahir" data-source="post: 7747050" data-attributes="member: 6803643">While yes, you should blame Paracelsus for first equating the word Gnome with a diminutive fantastic people (γη-νομος (gēnomos, "earth-dweller"), the mythical people he was referencing, the Pygmy Tribe (Πυγμαῖοι (Pygmaioi, "tribe the length of the forearm") date back to Classical Greece as described by Pliny and Aristotle.  However, Paracelsus' use was as the Earth-elemental, akin to Sylph of the wind, Undine of the water, and Salamander of the fire. If anything, his Gnomes were more akin to Daolings in D&D!There are four others who share at least as much of the blame for "inventing the little buggers" as we know them today:First, Nicolas-Pierre-Henri de Montfaucon de Villars, the Abbot of Villars, who in 1670 equated Paracelsus' Gnome term with the European mythological archetype of the mine-living jewel-hoarder faerie people - from which we also get Dwarves, Goblins, and Kobolds. Second, Sir Charles Edmund Asham, 10th Baronet in Northhampton. He brought back 21 German Gartenzwerge or "Garden Dwarves" to the U.K. in 1840, and decided to market them and call them Garden Gnomes. The use of other, non-dwarf equivalents for translations had already existed before then - the French called them "Jardinains" after Garden Nain, a French folkloric diminutive demon, more equivalent in D&D to an Imp or a even a Tiefling, that supposedly had inhabited the Celtic ruins of Brettony. While these dropped in popularity after WWI, Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" caused a resurge in popularity in Garden Dwarves in Germany, which led to a resurge in popularity in Garden Gnomes the world over after WWII. Third, J.R.R. Tolkien, inadvertently. He originally used the term Gnome, from γνώμη (gnṓmē, “thought, judgement”) to refer to his Noldorin race of high elves (Fëanor's people), who were the elves with dark hair and pale skin, but in demeanor, interests, and choice of residence were more like Dwarves (to the point that their chief Vala was the prototype for D&D's Moradin). He wanted English approximation terms at the time, which is why he used Goblin for Orc, and why he didn't call Hobbits Periannath in the context of his books. But he threw out the term Gnomes and went with just the elven word Noldor because of reader confusion with various popular depictions of Gnomes after Paracelsus and Villars. But the damage was done - the term was widely known among the super-geeks of Tolkien fandom – i.e., the creators of Gnomes in D&D!! – and we took his false-cognate idea and made Gnomes "like dwarves, but smarter and more fey!"Finally, Wil Huygen, the Dutch author of the 1976 book "Gnomes" which spawned the internationally-beloved TV series, "David the Gnome." Well, really we should blame his English translator, since he wrote them as Kabouter, the Dutch equivalent of Leprechauns. But his translator evoked Asham's "Garden Gnomes" with the translation, and it's really from Huygen's works that we get the Forest Gnome archetype as opposed to the Deep and Rock Gnome archetypes.In short, if we only blamed Paracelsus, we'd all be playing Daolings but calling them Gnomes instead of these miniature mad inventors we've come to know and love in D&D. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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