Jawnomicon

About

Jawnomicon is a bestiary of 646 figures from folklore, myth and cryptid report. It began as the creature roster of a game and has grown in batches drafted from a library of reference volumes. Most of what is on a figure's page was written or extracted by a language model. This page says which parts, and what was read.

What each part of a page is

The line under the name
Machine-written. One sentence saying what the figure is.
Traditions, regions, kinds
Assigned by a model from the description and checked in batches. The first tradition listed is the primary one.
Named in
The reference works whose entries name this figure, from a census of 33,330 names read across 46 works. 554 of the 646 figures have at least one. The text of those works is never reproduced here.
Traits
623 motifs and 185 powers, extracted from each description by a model. The sentence shown under a trait is the sentence of the description it was read from, not a quotation from a source.
Kinship
26 lines of descent, added by hand in a kinship pass and approved one by one. The sentence under each is from the description, as with traits. These are the gold lines on the constellation.
Symbols
Objects and signs a figure carries or is known by, matched from a symbol vocabulary; the sentence under each is from the description.
Personality profile
29 axes scored by two models against a written rubric, kept where the two agreed. It scores the description, not a source. Axes that do not apply to a being are listed, not scored.
Description
Machine-written. 349 were imported from the game's design documents; 297 were drafted in growth batches from documented tradition and approved before entry. Paragraphs marked as extrapolation have no source at all.
Constellation and families
Two figures are joined when they share more traits than chance would give two figures with vocabularies that size. The 44 families are groups found in that map; their names are the site's, not the sources'. Resemblance is not descent. The map holds 596 figures; 50 added since its last build are not yet placed.

What was read

46 works, with the number of figures each one records.

  1. Encyclopedia of Beasts and Monsters in Myth, Legend and Folklore, Theresa Bane · 343
  2. Giants, Monsters, and Dragons, Carol Rose · 262
  3. Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend, Maria Leach, editor · 210
  4. Spirits, Fairies, Leprechauns, and Goblins, Carol Rose · 207
  5. Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoology, George M. Eberhart · 121
  6. Dictionary of Symbols and Imagery, Ad de Vries · 61
  7. An Encyclopedia of Fairies, Katharine Briggs · 59
  8. An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols, J. C. Cooper · 51
  9. The Fairy Mythology, Thomas Keightley · 48
  10. The Library, Apollodorus, translated by J. G. Frazer · 44
  11. The Encyclopedia of Celtic Mythology and Folklore, Patricia Monaghan · 41
  12. Early Greek Myth, Timothy Gantz · 39
  13. The Gods of the Egyptians, E. A. Wallis Budge · 33
  14. Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica, Hesiod, translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White · 30
  15. Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia, Jeremy Black and Anthony Green · 25
  16. The Sháhnáma, Firdausi, translated by Arthur George Warner and Edmond Warner · 25
  17. Legends of the Fire Spirits, Robert Lebling · 24
  18. The Book of Yōkai, Michael Dylan Foster · 24
  19. A Complete Guide to Heraldry, Arthur Charles Fox-Davies · 22
  20. Japandemonium Illustrated, Toriyama Sekien, translated by Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt · 20
  21. The Legends of the Jews, Louis Ginzberg · 20
  22. The Heraldic Imagination, Rodney Dennys · 19
  23. American Folklore: An Encyclopedia, Jan Harold Brunvand, editor · 16
  24. Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders, William Henderson · 16
  25. A Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology and Religion, John Dowson · 15
  26. British Goblins, Wirt Sikes · 15
  27. Myths and Legends of Japan, F. Hadland Davis · 15
  28. Mythical Monsters, Charles Gould · 14
  29. Philippine Folk Literature: The Myths, Damiana L. Eugenio · 14
  30. Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs, John Lindow · 13
  31. American Indian Myths and Legends, Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz, editors · 11
  32. Malay Magic, Walter William Skeat · 10
  33. Myths and Legends of the Bantu, Alice Werner · 10
  34. An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya, Mary Miller and Karl Taube · 9
  35. Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, Sabine Baring-Gould · 9
  36. Egyptian Mythology, Geraldine Pinch · 9
  37. Russian Folk Belief, Linda J. Ivanits · 9
  38. The Mythology of South America, John Bierhorst · 9
  39. African Mythology A to Z, Patricia Ann Lynch · 8
  40. The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia, R. Campbell Thompson · 8
  41. The Kalevala, translated by John Martin Crawford · 8
  42. Gods and Fighting Men, Lady Gregory · 7
  43. The Mabinogion, translated by Lady Charlotte Guest · 4
  44. The Dragon in China and Japan, M. W. de Visser · 3
  45. Australian Legendary Tales, K. Langloh Parker · 2
  46. Hawaiian Mythology, Martha Beckwith · 2

The census lists every name read from those works, including the 2,280 not yet in the bestiary.

Version

Built from export v33 of the canon. The constellation and the families come from an earlier build; that is why 50 figures are not yet on the map.