page_title: Jiaolong
section_title: Etymology
hierarchical_section_title: Jiaolong / Name / Etymology
context_page_description: Jiaolong or jiao is a dragon in Chinese mythology, often defined as a "scaled dragon"; it is hornless according to certain scholars and said to be aquatic or river-dwelling. It may have referred to a species of crocodile.
  A number of scholars point to non-Sinitic southern origins for the legendary creature and ancient texts chronicle that the Yue people once tattooed their bodies to ward against these monsters.
  In English translations, jiao has been variously rendered as "jiao-dragon", "crocodile", "flood dragon", "scaly dragon", or even "kraken".
context_section_description: Jiao's (蛟) etymology is obscure. Michael Carr, using Bernhard Karlgren's reconstruction of Old Chinese *kǒg 蛟, explains.
  Most etymologies for jiao < *kǒg 蛟 are unsupported speculations upon meanings of its phonetic *kǒg 交 'cross; mix with; contact', e.g., the *kǒg 蛟 dragon can *kǒg 交 'join' its head and tail in order to capture prey, or moves in a *kǒg 交 'twisting' manner, or has *kǒg 交 'continuous' eyebrows. The only corroborated hypothesis takes *kǒg 交 'breed with' to mean *kǒg 蛟 indicates a dragon 'crossbreed; mixture'. (1990:126-7)
  The word has "mermaid" as one possible gloss, and Schuessler 2007:308 suggests possible etymological connections with Burmese kʰruᴮ or kʰyuᴮ "mermaid; serpent" and Tibetan klu "nāga; water spirits", albeit the Tibeto-Burman are phonologically distant from OC.
  Crossed eyebrows
  The explanation that its name comes from eyebrows that "cross over" (交 jiao) is given in the ancient text Shuyi ji "Records of Strange Things" (6th century) (Luo tr. 2003:3508).
  Early sense as mating dragons
  It has been suggested that jiaolong might have referred to a pair of dragons mating, with their long bodies coiled around each other (Wen Yiduo 2001a:95–96)
  Thus in the legend around the jiaolong 蛟龍 hovering above the mother giving birth to a future emperor i.e., Liu Bang, the founding emperor of Han, r. 202-195 BCE  (Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian), the alternative conjectural interpretation is that it was a pair of mating dragons.
  The same legend occurs in nearly verbatim copy in the Book of Han, except that the dragons are given as 交龍 "crossed dragons". Wen noted that in early use jiaolong 交龍 "crossed dragons" was emblematic of the mythological creators Fuxi and Nüwa, who are represented as having a human's upper body and a dragon's tail (Wen 1956:18-19 apud Carr 1990:127).
caption: Nüwa and Fuxi. Tomb painting excavated in Xinjiang.
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