Dragaunce

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A family name passed down through generations and carried by the people belonging to a particular lineage
2. A surname borne by members of a single family, used to identify them in records and everyday life
3. The hereditary last name shared by a family group and written after a person's given name

Etymology: "Dragaunce" is an old spelling of "dragon," the mythical serpent-like beast. Its ancestry runs back to Greek "drakōn," meaning a large serpent, which passed into Latin as "draco" and then into Old French as "dragon." English took the word in that French form, and spellings like this one show how it was pronounced and written before the modern form settled. The variant is a reminder that English spelling was unstandardized for centuries, so the same word could appear in several shapes. In its earliest uses, the word denoted a real snake or a giant serpent rather than the winged, fire-breathing creature of later European legend. The winged dragon emerged gradually as medieval writers merged the serpent with other monsters. The older sense survives in the word's association with serpents, and the fire-breathing image came later.

Synonyms: dragon, wyrm