Ogre - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

OGRE, the name in fairy tales and folk-lore of a malignant monstrous giant who lives on human flesh. The word is French, and occurs first in Charles Perrault's Histoires ou conies du temps passé (1697). The first English use is in the translation of a French version of the Arabian Nights in 1713, where it is spelled hogre. Attempts have been made to connect the word with Ugri, the racial name of the Magyars or Hungarians, but it is generally accepted that it was adapted into French from the O. Span. huerco, huergo, uergo, cognate with Ital. orco, i.e. Orcus, the Latin god of the dead and the infernal regions (see Pluto), who in Romance folk-lore became a man-eating demon of the woods.