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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Johnny Angel" data-source="post: 6368924" data-attributes="member: 13334">I do raise an eyebrow a bit that they've taken a generic Latin term for spider and made it the name of a very specific type of monstrous spider. I realize that D&D has a history of nailing down what is meant by some formerly vague mythological terms like kobold or goblin. They even specified the nature of creatures whose names were, I would argue, meant to be construed broadly, like Ghost or Spirit. They re-purposed terms that actually did have more defined referents, like lemures (the angry spirits of the dead, now a kind of demon) manes (formerly the souls of deceased loved ones, now a kind of demon) troglodyte (formerly a word synonymous with caveman, a primitive human, now another type of lizardman). In his eclectic research, clearly Gygax didn't really care what the terms he churned up actually meant to begin with. This is the guy who turned a bunch of historical names for soldiers from various times and cultures and turned them into the names of fighter level ranks. But let's not continue to plunder the past in only the shallowest way, ripping a word out of its historical and mythological context and slapping it onto just anything we make up. Calling a creature Aranea is tantamount to just calling it Spider. It's an ordinary word that refers to an ordinary thing. Only because it's being used in English, it's suddenly exotic? You know what's even more exotic? A name you just make up. Why reach for the Latin word for spider when your use of it has as much relation to the Latin meaning of the word as if you'd just called it Big Bitey Thingy in English. As long as you care so little what the word actually means, why not call it Incunabula (crib) or Horreum (barn)?</blockquote>

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