A fantasy world feels inhabited when it is shared. Humans live alongside tall, ageless elves in the forests, stubborn dwarves under the mountains, small cheerful folk in their burrows and something darker in the east. That cast is so familiar now that it can seem natural, but it was assembled quite recently, from European folklore, from one Oxford professor’s imagination and from a tabletop game.
This guide covers the classic fantasy races: where each comes from, how it reached modern fantasy, and what writers do with it now. At the end there is advice on inventing peoples of your own.
A note on the word “race”
Fantasy has called its peoples “races” since Tolkien, but the word has drawn growing criticism, because the old conventions (some peoples innately good, some innately evil, each with fixed traits) echo real-world racial thinking in uncomfortable ways. Dungeons & Dragons replaced “race” with “species” in its 2024 Player’s Handbook, and many writers now use “peoples”, “kindreds” or “ancestries”. This guide uses “races” because it is still the term most readers search for, and “peoples” where it reads more naturally.
The classic four
Elves
In folklore: The Old Norse álfar and Old English ælfe were powerful, sometimes dangerous beings, able to cause illness (“elf-shot”) or bestow gifts. Later English folklore shrank them into tiny sprites, the elves of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In fantasy: J. R. R. Tolkien restored their height and gravity. His elves are immortal, wise, melancholy and bound to the fate of the world. Nearly every tall, graceful, long-lived elf since descends from them, through D&D, The Elder Scrolls and countless novels. Common traits: long life, beauty, magic, archery, closeness to nature, a sense of fading from the world. Variations to know: high elves, wood elves, and dark elves (drow in D&D, from the Orkney and Shetland word for trow, a troll-like being). Terry Pratchett’s elves in Lords and Ladies are a useful corrective: glamorous, cruel and closer to the old folklore. Name one with our elf name generator.
Dwarves
In folklore: The Norse dvergar were smiths who forged the treasures of the gods, including Thor’s hammer, and lived in rocks and mountains. Germanic tales gave us the dwarfs of Snow White. In fantasy: Tolkien wrote the modern dwarf: short, bearded, proud, long-memoried, master craftsmen and miners with a love of gold that can become ruinous. He also fixed the plural “dwarves” (the dictionary preferred “dwarfs”). Common traits: endurance, craft, grudges, clan loyalty, beards, axes, a home under the mountain. Writers’ twists: Pratchett’s Discworld dwarves debate whether dwarf women may reveal they are women; Andrzej Sapkowski’s are cynical survivors in a human-dominated world. Try our dwarf name generator.
Halflings (hobbits)
Origin: Tolkien invented hobbits for The Hobbit (1937), though the word “hobbit” appears once in a 19th-century list of folklore creatures. Because the name is protected, Dungeons & Dragons and other games use halfling. Common traits: small, comfortable, fond of food and home, unexpectedly brave, overlooked by the powerful. Why they matter: the hobbit is the reader’s way in, an ordinary person carried into an epic. Many fantasies use a human farm boy for the same job.
Orcs
Origin: Tolkien took the word from Old English (orcneas in Beowulf, among the monsters descended from Cain, and orc for a demon). His orcs are the brutal soldiers of the Dark Lord. In fantasy: For decades orcs were simply the enemy. Warcraft, from the 1990s, made them a people with a culture, honour and a history of being wronged, and writers since have often turned them into the misunderstood outsiders of their worlds. Common traits: strength, tusks, tribes, war. Modern versions add honour codes, shamanism and a grievance against the “civilised” peoples. The debate: a race that exists to be killed without guilt is the clearest case of the problem described above. Most current fantasy either gives orcs inner lives or drops them. Try our orc name generator.
The wider family
Goblins and hobgoblins
From European folklore, small malicious spirits (the word may come from the Old French gobelin). In fantasy they are usually small, clever, cowardly and numerous. Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor makes them a proud, dark-skinned people treated with suspicion by elves, a sharp reversal.
Gnomes
Introduced by the 16th-century alchemist Paracelsus as earth elementals. Modern fantasy turns them into small tinkerers and illusionists, and garden ornaments did the rest.
Giants
Present in nearly every mythology, from the Norse jötnar to the Greek Titans and the Biblical Nephilim. In fantasy they range from stupid brutes to ancient, sorrowful races older than the gods. Roald Dahl’s The BFG is the friendliest.
Trolls
Scandinavian folklore made them large, slow and turned to stone by sunlight. Tolkien kept the stone; Pratchett made them silicon-based and cleverer in the cold.
Fae (the fair folk)
Not one race but a whole otherworld: the Irish aos sí, the Seelie and Unseelie courts of Scottish tradition, the Tuatha Dé Danann. Fae are bound by rules (iron, names, bargains, hospitality) and are rarely kind. They are at the centre of modern romantasy; see our romantasy books list.
Merfolk
Half human, half fish, found in folk traditions around the world. Usually tied to longing and danger. In fantasy they are often an undersea kingdom with its own politics.
Centaurs
Greek in origin: wild, violent horse-men, with wise Chiron as the exception. Fantasy often makes them stargazers and archers, as in C. S. Lewis’s Narnia.
Dragonborn and other D&D ancestries
Dungeons & Dragons added peoples that have since spread to novels and games: dragonborn (humanoid dragons), tieflings (humans with fiendish ancestry), aasimar (celestial ancestry), genasi (elemental), tabaxi (cat-folk). These are mostly modern inventions with light mythic roots.
Half-elves and half-orcs
Mixed heritage characters caught between two peoples, belonging fully to neither. A staple of fantasy because they are such a direct way to write about identity.
How Tolkien and D&D built the modern list
The sequence matters:
- Folklore supplied the names and a few traits: elves were dangerous and beautiful, dwarves made things, trolls feared the sun.
- Tolkien, in The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954–55), fixed these into peoples with languages, histories and characteristic virtues, and invented the hobbit and the modern orc.
- Dungeons & Dragons (1974 onward) turned them into playable options with game statistics, which meant every people needed clear strengths, weaknesses and a role. That is where many of the stereotypes hardened: the intelligent elf, the tough dwarf, the strong orc.
- Video games, from Warcraft to The Elder Scrolls and Dragon Age, then spread those versions to tens of millions of people, and began to question them.
If you have read The Lord of the Rings and want more in the same vein, see books like The Lord of the Rings.
Writing fantasy peoples of your own
Start from where they live. A people’s character should grow from their land. Mountain dwellers think about stone, cold and darkness; river people think about trade, floods and strangers. Our worldbuilding guide has more on this.
Make them disagree with each other. Real peoples are not uniform. Give your dwarves a reformist faction, your elves a poet who thinks immortality is a curse, your orcs a city dweller embarrassed by her grandmother. Internal disagreement is what turns a type into a culture.
Avoid moral biology. If an entire people is evil by birth, the story is telling the reader that some people deserve to die. Most modern readers notice, and many editors will too. Give your villains reasons instead.
Borrow carefully. Folklore from living cultures (the fae of Irish tradition, the yōkai of Japan, the beings of Indigenous American traditions) carries meaning for real people. Research, credit and adapt with care.
Ask what humans are in your world. In Tolkien, humans are the short-lived, restless people who inherit the earth. In your world they might be the newcomers, the slaves or the gods. Deciding what humans are clarifies everyone else.
For the clichés to avoid and the ones worth keeping, see our guide to fantasy tropes. For beasts rather than peoples, see the list of fantasy creatures.
Frequently asked questions
What are the main fantasy races? The classic set is humans, elves, dwarves, halflings (hobbits) and orcs, with gnomes, goblins, giants, trolls and the fae as common additions. Dungeons & Dragons adds dragonborn, tieflings and others.
Who invented fantasy races? No single person. The names and many traits come from Norse, Germanic and Celtic folklore. Tolkien shaped them into the modern versions, and Dungeons & Dragons standardised them for games.
Why is “species” replacing “race” in fantasy? Because “race” implies the kind of fixed, biological differences in character and intelligence that real-world racism claimed for humans. Dungeons & Dragons switched to “species” in 2024, and many writers use “peoples” or “ancestries”.
What is the difference between elves and fae? In modern fantasy, elves are usually a mortal or long-lived people living in the world, in the Tolkien tradition. Fae are beings of an otherworld bound by strange rules and bargains, closer to the old folklore. Some writers use the words interchangeably.