Here Be Dragons: The Dragons, Worms and Wyrms of British Folklore and Place Names

British folklore is full of dragons, and the map still carries old words for them. Does every dragon sit next to a church, a barrow, a hillfort or a river? I collected 29 British dragon, worm and serpent legends from English Wikipedia and D. L. Ashliman's British Dragons texts and placed 26 of them at the village, hill or wood their source names, using OS Open Names. Separately, I collected all 135 names in OS Open Names with words beginning Dragon, Drake, Worm or Serpent, classed by form and treated as possible dragon names unless a source supports a dragon reading. Each legend and name was compared with 50 ordinary places of the same type from the same 50 km square and with random land, using 2,000 replicate control sets. The legends cling to the church: 77% lie within 1 km of a church in Wikidata, against 55% of matched places (chance 0.015). They are no nearer barrows, hillforts or rivers than matched places. The names show no church pattern; they are somewhat nearer recorded barrows, a signal that comes from the north (33% within 2 km against 16%), while the two Drakelows explained as dragon's mound have no recorded barrow nearby. 4 of 5 worm legends are northern, but Worm names are not. Churches of St George and St Michael are slightly commoner near legends. The dragons of the stories live where the people lived. Interactive version: https://tristan-hotham.github.io/here-be-dragons/. Data and code: https://github.com/Tristan-Hotham/here-be-dragons. Blog post: https://blog.tristanhotham.com/2026/10/27/here-be-dragons/.