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Call a Pegasus a Hippogriff: Difference between revisions
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Could be employed just to underline in red crayon that [[Our Monsters Are Different|Your Monsters Are Different]]. Alternatively, of course, the writer [[Did Not Do the Research]] -- ''or'' did [[Viewers Are Geniuses|a little too much research]], finding an extremely obscure name or form of a familiar creature. This is a common cheat when fishing for names for [[Palette Swap]] [[Underground Monkey|Underground Monkeys]].
This isn't quite [[Sadly Mythtaken]] as the very fact that the writer ''knows'' that mythical creatures have specific names implies doing some research. (Sadly Mythtaken is more for [[The Theme Park Version]] / Disneyfication of classic myths.)
In case you're wondering, the most commonly accepted generic term for [[Winged Horse|Winged Horses]] is "''pterripi''". However they're often simply called "pegasi/pegasus" after the most famous example -- see [[A Kind of One]].
Compare [[Istanbul Not Constantinople]], which is similar but for place names.
When a completely fantastical character is named after a commonly-known creature, see [[Call a Smeerp a Rabbit]], which is a sister trope. The title is a takeoff on [[Call a Rabbit a Smeerp]], and is a reference to one of the best-known examples.
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== Literature ==
* In [[E. Nesbit]]'s ''The Book Of Beasts'', the hero must summon a creature identified as a hippogriff to save his city from a dragon. The creature that appears is what most people would identify as a pegasus, a winged horse. To be fair, you can't say that a hippogriff ''isn't'' a winged horse (or that a pegasus isn't technically [[Mix-and-Match Critters|part horse, part bird]] for that matter). It's also possible that Nesbit figured that the word pegasus must only refer to ''[[A Kind of One|the]]'' Pegasus; this was ages before [[My Little Pony]] remember.
** Actually Pliny the Elder mentioned Pegasi living in Aegypt. So the idea of numbers of Winged Horses existing is [[Older Than Print]].
* An older example is Frank Stockton's short story, ''The Griffin and the Minor Canon'' from 1885, in which the eponymous monster -- by its description -- is [[Our Gryphons Are Different|clearly a dragon]]. The story might actually be considered a [[Lampshade Hanging]] on this trope, as the dragon sees a statue of a griffin and assumes that (since it also has four legs, wings, ''etc''.) he must be of the same species and that "griffin" is what humans call him. Got all that?
** Actually, it's more accurately a [[Our Dragons Are Different|wyvern or wyrm]] , as it has only two legs:
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** Sir [[wikipedia:Arthur Charles Fox-Davies|Arthur Charles Fox-Davies]] warns against confusing the two in his ''A Complete Guide to Heraldry'', so it was apparently a common Victorian mistake.
* One of the stranger examples is in the book ''Thorn Ogres of Hagwood''. A character wanders into the action about halfway through the story. He is a short humanoid with a big, big beard and he carries a lot of different tools and has a great talent for metalwork. He is [[Our Dwarves Are All the Same|identified as a dwa...]] no, wait, he is a Pooka. [[Trickster Mentor|Pookas]] technically can [[A Form You Are Comfortable With|appear as dwarves]] but, as you may recall from ''[[Harvey]]'', they also tend to be a lot weirder.
** Similarly, in ''[[Xanth]]'', despite having clearly done the research (Anthony had the [[Snakes Are Sexy|Naga]] being snakes with human heads rather than alt-named Lamia), the creatures he calls Pooka are... ghost horses bound to the living world with chains swathed around their bodies, who can't talk and have very shy temperaments. And can somehow reproduce (then again, [[
*** The original pooka was known for transforming into a large black horse that would give anyone foolish enough to mount it a terrifying ride, which is probably the origin for that bit of lore.
* Similarly, mythical Veela are closer to Sirens, not the Succubi in the ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]'' books.
** Another Potter example is boggarts, which are not shapeshifters in English lore.
* [[J. R. R. Tolkien|JRR Tolkien]] was fond of using "worm," the Middle and Modern English cognate of Old English "wyrm", to mean "dragon" or "serpent". "Worm" in the sense of "dragon" is attested as late as the mid-19th century in Northern English, as in the ballads of the Lambton Worm and the Laidly Worm, so the Good Professor wasn't just making it up as he went along.
** It is even older - in the old North Germanic languages, "orm" could mean a snake, a worm or a dragon by modern English terms.
* Although she never appears in the stories in person, it's made pretty clear that [[H.P. Lovecraft|H.P. Lovecraft's]] Mother Hydra has nothing to do with the Hydra of the Greek myth.
* In David Weber's ''[[Safehold]]'' books, the humans who have settled on the planet Safehold have named many local animals after mythical beasts. Examples include the kraken (described as a cross between a squid and a shark, fitting the latter's place in Safeholdian ecology), the [[Our Dragons Are Different|dragon]] (a massive, six-legged animal that comes in both carnivorous and herbivorous varieties), and the wyvern (''four''-winged flyers that are the Safeholdian analogue of birds).
* [[Hell's Gate|Arcana]] has "[[Unicorn|Unicorns]]," which resemble the usual image of unicorns only in that they have a single horn and are roughly horse-sized and shaped. They are black, with disproportionately long legs, powerful hindquarters, and ears like a bobcat -- and possess a mouthful of long tusks and sharp, carnivorous teeth.
* There are carnivorous "Alicorns" (also called "One-Horns", but guess what unicorn means) in the ''Elvenbane'' series as well. Traditionally, this word refers to either [[Winged Unicorn|winged unicorns]] or the horn of a unicorn, although it's likely a result of centuries of [[Recursive Translation]] from English <-> French (unicorn -> ''une icorne'' -> ''l'icorne'' -> a licorn -> alicorn).
** Some of the main characters are shapeshifting superintelligent dragons who are, in some details, [[Our Dragons Are Different|quite different]].
* In ''[[The Carpet People]]'', there's an enigmatic, prescient race which most people would call "[[Our Elves Are Better|elves]]" based on the description. Instead they're "[[Our Wights Are Different|wights]]", which more commonly refers to minions of [[The Undead]].
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** ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' also has bipedal dragons. They are called proto-drakes and as the "proto" implies, they are weaker and at a lower [[Evolutionary Levels|Evolutionary Level]] than regular dragons: they are generally smaller, although there's a large range in dragon size, and are incapable of speech or using magic like most dragons.
** Same thing with the wyverns, which look more like lion-bats http://www.wowwiki.com/Wyvern than two legged winged reptiles found in medieval heraldry as well as the chimeras, which looked like two headed wyverns http://www.wowwiki.com/Chimaera
** Lammasu's look like an unsightly miniature cross between an Arokkoa (ugly bird-like humanoids in WOW) and a mole rather than the lion/bull bodied, human headed, winged Mesopotamian guardian deity depicted in Sumerian statues.
** Hippogryphs in the Warcraft universe look like bird-stags instead of bird-horses and are often green, making them more resemble the mythological peryton.
* In ''[[Castlevania Aria of Sorrow]]'', the Cockatrice and the Basilisk are pretty much palette swaps, although they are completely separate critters. Most of the time.
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** According to one interpretation (which happens to be shared by series creator Shigeru Miyamoto) each ''Zelda'' title is a differently corrupted version of the same core story rather than an entirely new chapter in Hyrule's history, a notion which the unusual in-universe use of this trope would appear to support.
* In Cornish folklore, a spriggan is a kind of goblin that can grow to giant size. In ''[[The Elder Scrolls]]'', it's basically a dryad.
* A few liberties were taken in the depiction of Greek myth's monsters in [[God of War]], mainly for the sake of [[Rule of Cool]].
** [http://godofwar.wikia.com/wiki/Scylla Scylla] looks like a leviathan than the [http://www.theoi.com/Pontios/Skylla.html 6-headed, dog-waisted cursed nymph from Homer's Odyssey and the Ovid], whereas Poseidon's Hippocampi half horse/half fish (or in this case, [http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=§ion=&global=1&q=god+of+war+hippocampi#/d510z7e crustacean]) mounts are often confused with leviathans.
** The [http://godofwar.wikia.com/wiki/Kraken kraken] looks suspiciously like the [http://jeradsmarantz.blogspot.com/2010/04/kraken-for-clash-of-titans.html Kraken] from the [[Clash of the Titans]] remake
** Some of the monsters Kratos fights aren't even native to Greek mythology, such as the Irish [http://godofwar.wikia.com/wiki/Banshee Banshee] and the Arabic [http://godofwar.wikia.com/wiki/Rocs Roc].
* Although depictions of monsters from the [[Shin Megami Tensei]] series are more or less accurate, there are some monsters that are noticeably different from the original mold. Most egregious are most versions of Cerberus, which looks like a snake-tailed albino lion father than a 3-headed canine (although the 3-headed cerberus was used in [[Persona 3]] as [[Team Pet]] Koromaru's persona).
== Webcomics ==
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