On the Origin of the Symbol “Dragon” from the Zoonym “Crocodile” in the Cultures of Ancient Southern China and Vietnam

Abstract

The author explores the origin of the symbol “dragon” in the cultures of ancient Southern China and Vietnam from the “crocodile”, puts forward the hypothesis that the ancient ethnonym and toponym “Yue” 越, (modern Vietnam) come from the Chinese zoonym ‘crocodile’ 鳄鱼 èyú. Other sources are the words “yue” 岳 ‘mountain’, “yue” 钺 ‘great battle axe’ and “yue” 月 ‘moon’. The Vietnamese word âu ‘seagull’, isomorphic to the Chinese word 鸥 ‘ōu’, is also involved in the semiotic analysis. Correlation of the Chinese letter from “jiaguwen” to “kaishu” (with the mention of the Vietnamese “ty-nom” and the letter of the state “Dian”) with historical and modern reality contributes to the objectification of the Chinese-Vietnamese world, the possibility of studying it using philological knowledge. The article also provides a comparison of the Chinese classification of nature by Zhou Qu-fei with the system of Carl Linnaeus and the earlier classification of Conrad Gesner, and develops the idea of the economy of nature.