whats exactly the difference between naga and lamia tags and do we really need both of them?

Mutisija said:
whats exactly the difference between naga and lamia tags and do we really need both of them?

Sometimes I wonder if people even read the wiki...

"Most people tend to use this word and lamia as if they were interchangable, which is not the case.

Lamia was a spirit in Greek mythology that would come during the night to feed on children. While she is known to have other forms, the most popular description includes having the lower body of a snake.

Nagas, however, come from Indian mythology. Nagas were a group of serpent gods whose bodies tented to look like a mixture of human and snake features. While some of them do match the description of lamias given above (hence the confusion, it doesn't help that neither the descriptions or the individuals have much in common) its preferred usage on this site is to designate snake-like creatures featuring a completely reptilian body with a humanoid torso.

TL; DR:
Human/not snake from the waist up : Lamia
Snake with arms : Naga"

White_Len said:
Sometimes I wonder if people even read the wiki...

"Most people tend to use this word and lamia as if they were interchangable, which is not the case.

Lamia was a spirit in Greek mythology that would come during the night to feed on children. While she is known to have other forms, the most popular description includes having the lower body of a snake.

Nagas, however, come from Indian mythology. Nagas were a group of serpent gods whose bodies tented to look like a mixture of human and snake features. While some of them do match the description of lamias given above (hence the confusion, it doesn't help that neither the descriptions or the individuals have much in common) its preferred usage on this site is to designate snake-like creatures featuring a completely reptilian body with a humanoid torso.

TL; DR:
Human/not snake from the waist up : Lamia
Snake with arms : Naga"

then the tags need a lot cleaning because people seem to be using a little bit both tags for both things

Yeeeeah. I always thought a lamia was called a naga... Never even heard of lamias before now.

And how are we supposed to accurately tag them when the source material disagrees with the wiki?

I've seen plenty of Nagas in games and fiction that don't fit the "snake with arms" definition; and even in mythology, they're often depicted as "Human from the waist up". Visually identical to Lamia.

Strictly by the wiki, Nagas from traditional art should be tagged as Lamia here? That makes no sense to me.

Not to mention that a naga can actually look exactly like a lamia.
And lamia can actually not even look like a snake at all, meet D&D 4th edition's lamia:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/54/Fourtheditionlamia.JPG