Question concerning copyright and names

[RiayNight]

Hi Nathan. I'm a longtime fan and reader. I haven't been too active in the boards, but I love your blog. I'm working on a new novel that concerns aliens, and I came up with a name for a certain race after screwing around looking at different latin words for a bit. Two variations I came up with were Dracarian and Dracan. Having a feeling that the name might be out there already, I googled them both. There weren't very many results for either of them, but I did find a novel called "The Last Dragon:Rise of the Dragon Queen" (there were only three available on Amazon) that told the story of the "Dracarian chronicles", as well as another book called, "Dracans: A matter of choice" (this one wasn't even listed on Amazon).

I hope this isn't a silly question--I apologize if it is, I'm just a little disappointed since I came up with the name without seeing either of these works, and I'm reluctant to let it go. I was wondering if I could still use "Dracarians" as the name of my alien race without any copyright infringement if my characters and plot are substantially different from whatever is within these two books. While researching these books, I discovered that there are a few other titles called, "The Last Dragon" by different authors, which made me wonder if using Dracarian would be acceptable.

Thank you so much for your time, I appreciate it more than I can express!

[Nathan Bransford]

Hi Nathan. I'm a longtime fan and reader. I haven't been too active in the boards, but I love your blog. I'm working on a new novel that concerns aliens, and I came up with a name for a certain race after screwing around looking at different latin words for a bit. Two variations I came up with were Dracarian and Dracan. Having a feeling that the name might be out there already, I googled them both. There weren't very many results for either of them, but I did find a novel called "The Last Dragon:Rise of the Dragon Queen" (there were only three available on Amazon) that told the story of the "Dracarian chronicles", as well as another book called, "Dracans: A matter of choice" (this one wasn't even listed on Amazon).

I hope this isn't a silly question--I apologize if it is, I'm just a little disappointed since I came up with the name without seeing either of these works, and I'm reluctant to let it go. I was wondering if I could still use "Dracarians" as the name of my alien race without any copyright infringement if my characters and plot are substantially different from whatever is within these two books. While researching these books, I discovered that there are a few other titles called, "The Last Dragon" by different authors, which made me wonder if using Dracarian would be acceptable.

Thank you so much for your time, I appreciate it more than I can express!

I honestly don't know the answer to this one, sorry! You could go with it for now and in the event it's published run it by the publisher, who should be able to advise you. But if you are going to self-published I would either change the name or consult with an intellectual property attorney before publishing.